in which I spread my arms wide and await my fate: for immersive fans to see this article and scream at me

There are two truths that might seem contradictory. Truth one: I love immersive sims. Truth two: "immersive sim" is not a real thing. You might think that these are contradictory on their face, and you would be correct. And yet, here I am, writing this.

Let me explain.

We should probably start at the beginning. Some of you are probably asking, what the hell is an "immersive sim?" So we have to define what it actually is, and in truth, it's often defined by what it is not. It's usually referred to as a genre of video game, but I reject that framing. First, the idea of distinct video game genres has been getting increasingly meaningless as we've been hit with a tidal wave of deckbuilding roguelike battle royale RPGs with soulslike progression, or whathaveyou. "Immersive sim," or "imsim" as the kids call it, is not really a genre per se, but rather it's a loose design philosophy with a core idea of multiple independent systems that interact in ways that the developer doesn't necessarily plan or code for.

As a concept, "immersive sim" is fundamentally genre-agnostic; the three most commonly cited examples of immersive sims, especially by old heads, are Thief, System Shock and Deus Ex, in other words a stealth game, a survival horror game, and an RPG. There may be some mechanical overlap but in general they're all very different games. You cannot reasonably expect to box them all under the same label. Immersive sims don't even have to be in first person; Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid series, arguably imsims by way of a kind of convergent evolution, are all predominantly in third person, sometimes even  top-down (in keeping with the series' 2D roots.)

(Boy, that Metal Gear namedrop is gonna get me in trouble, huh?)

"Immersive sim" as a term was coined by Warren Spector to describe his game Deus Ex. At best, he was trying to come up with a catchy term to explain a game that defies any real genre pigeonholing. At worst, and I tend to lean towards this interpretation, he was cynically trying to pull a brand new marketing buzzword out of his ass, because Spector, for all his talents as a game developer, is largely in the business of self-promotion. Little wonder, then, that he would go on to retroactively apply the label to some of his previous games: Ultima VI: The False Prophet, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, and Thief: The Dark Project. And I think it's for this exact reason, that is to say "immersive sim" being a marketing buzzword invented as an act of self-aggrandizement, that it has struggled to achieve any sort of concrete identity in the quarter century since its coining. Nobody can really agree on a definition, because it's a fundamentally empty term that explains almost nothing in itself. This is also why a lot of purists will define immersive sims largely by the games they personally like while ignoring similar or identical games they don't like.

(And that's why my Metal Gear namedrop is gonna get me in trouble.) 

So we've established what an immersive sim is, sort of: it isn't really anything, just a loose collection of game design concepts that you can find in all kinds of games, with a terrible, non-indicative name.¹ Squaring this fact with the fact that I love immersive sims is simple: immersive sims speak to an idea of game design that appeals to me. I play games for the experience, the vibes and aesthetics. And nobody seems to really understand this, not even other immersive sim fans, who themselves frequently like to impose their own ideas on what makes an immersive sim onto others, in flagrant violation of immersive sims' radical spirit.

I've long felt that the kind of games I like aren't really the kind of games everyone else likes. Dan Olson's video essay Why It's Rude to Suck at Warcraft struck a chord with me because it really laid bare a thing about game culture that I don't think we acknowledge enough, that people aren't in it for experiences, they're in it for gratification. Everything is about making a number go up. In one example Olson gives, a guy was ostracized by his entire guild for not spending more hours grinding for a tiny chance at earning a trinket that was a few more levels ahead of the otherwise identical one he actually got, all for the sake of a small boost in performance output. And it's not just MMORPGs; this attitude can be found all across the gaming sphere. Everything is a high-stakes competition; it stops being about having fun and starts feeling like work. And that's on purpose: the reason it's considered rude to be bad at these games is because they activate the same neurons that make people go into finance. And (most) immersive sims consistently fail to find a broad audience because they expect more from the player, they expect honest engagement and a willingness to explore the world for yourself. That flies in the face of what gamers seem to want.

This isn't to say that I don't love other kinds of games. Sometimes I'm perfectly happy to play something more straightforward. And what's more straightforward than boomer shooters? But I'm always looking for something specific that I can't really find the words to describe, and it sucks. It's one of the many reasons I feel like an alien. Immersive sims are the closest I've been able to get, and for that reason I cherish them, because they mean that someone, somewhere, might think about games the way I do.

-june❤ 

1. To be fair, it's not alone in having a bad name; there are actual, fully-formed genres with terrible names, like "action RPG" seems to only describe Diablo 2 and its clones, and not something like The Legend of Zelda. Even the original Diablo gets shut out. It's totally arbitrary, but usage dictates definition, so we're stuck with it. And don't get me started on "soulsborne" or "metroidvania," both some of the worst genre names I've ever heard in my life.