Immersion in D&D

The topic of immersion came up when I discussed my miniatures and creativity post with my husband tonight, and I really got to thinking about the paradigm shift that is happening in gaming.

Many older seasoned gamers do not want to game with younger gamers, and I think that some of this has to do with immersion. A lot of seasoned gamers want to get into character and stay in character, to experience the game through the eyes of the character that they are playing. In contrast, some of the younger gamers seek different interactions and are not necessarily driven by the need to be in character the whole time. Why is this?

A lot of younger gamers have grown up playing video games in which they controlled a character and manipulated an icon of that character through the game in the third person. I grew up playing Nintendo Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda, watching an 8-bit icon of Mario or Link interact with the world around them at my discretion. Don't get me wrong, I also played pretend with my friends growing up, and we would be horses and cats and fantastic mythical creatures, but as I aged the video games started to better shape my interactions with the fantastic.

Although a lot more first-person video games are becoming available and the wii is changing all of this, many people still want to see their characters in the third person because they are used to interacting with the game world through their character from a more voyeuristic standpoint. I think that it becomes harder to immerse yourself in the game and to act totally in character when your past experiences have been based on acting as the observer pulling the puppet strings. So immersion becomes harder to do and less necessary to your enjoyment of the game.

I think that 4th edition D&D, in looking to expand the RPG audience, has focused less on immersion overall, perhaps in the hopes of attracting a younger generation of gamers. Therefore, it comes as little surprise that several older gamers don't like it, even beyond just being fixated on a previous system that they understand inside and out.