Just a moral or rather, ethical way to look at the design of games. As much as there’s going to be the sodders who love their GTA and Saint’s Row, we should really educate their gaming taste. Portal is so much better.

-Patrice

The game of Chess can be deeply immersive to some, and there really isn’t any character in the chess set. I believe that whenever the rules of play in a game are simple enought to grasp, yet interesting/emergent, and the external settings are favourable, people tend to drift off into an almost meditative state where they start to imagine their next move, as opposed to “planning” it. If any game can trigger this state, and people vary by the degree of immersion they feel in any one game, it can be an immersive experience.

I think the point about character development you mentioned can account for the “interesting” aspect of immersion, and yet the simplicity of interacting with the game environment and the ability to “get into” the game rules should never be sacrificed just to make things more interesting. (Flashy graphics in FPS games come to mind?)