At last count, my RSS feeder was keeping tabs on over thirty feeds. That’s not just websites and not just gaming-related (hi, Outside Magazine) — more like a giant-ass bucket of interests and keywords I sort through daily. While I’m pretty on top of culling the daily article flood — thanks to my ToDoist + Grit routine — a ton of articles get shunted into my ‘Saved’ feed. Basically, the digital equivalent of tossing your laundry onto a chair to “fold later.”
I was reading an article — now forgotten —
— that linked to another one about immersive sims. At the time, that term meant absolutely fuck all to me. I don’t even think it was linked as “blah blah blah immersive sims” — it was describing something else entirely and dropped the link. I thought, “Huh. This sounds interesting.”
So I read it top to bottom.
Then I got confused and asked a friend for help.
I pause for self-reflection
I went back and reread the article. Then I double-checked my ChatGPT breakdown.
“But wait,” I asked my friend, “this sounds exactly like the shit we want in good survival games??”
To which he, very wisely, agreed.
Before I lose the plot —
— the convo stuck with me because I had zero clue what an immersive sim was. And I’d never played any of the games listed in the article. (Or the titles ChatGPT spit out.)
Yet I’ve always subconsciously gravitated toward games with player choice, system-driven gameplay, interlocking (impactful) mechanics, and messy, emergent problem-solving.
However!
Deep down, in a tiny, judgmental voice tucked in the back of my skull, I’ve always had a personal litmus test for my games:
Can I roleplay it? Can I believe I’m in it — like I actually belong there?
(Not just pressing buttons and doing video game math, but reacting to a world that reacts back.)
Back, way back — to the RhyDin Inn
If you grew up with AOL, you’ll remember the early internet as a strange and wondrous place. And no place was more strange or wondrous than the RhyDin Inn — an AOL chatroom dedicated to letting budding English majors and future Dungeons & Dragons shut-ins flex their vocab and toss their flowing locks.
(Which often hid amber orbs. Sorry. Roleplay joke. You either get it…or you’re blessed.)
I asked ChatGPT to break it down…
…for those “not in the know,” but I’ll just stick the TL;DR here instead. (Man, I had SO MANY roleplay characters and SO MANY HTML websites built around each character.)
*Slowly, he drifts back to the point…*
HumanitZ has that va-va-voom.
It’s got the magic. The secret sauce. It gives me that feeling that the choices I’m making are mine, that they have real weight, and aren’t just ticking boxes along some internal checklist. Somewhere between starving to death and saving the life of an NPC, the good ones stop being survival games and start becoming stories you built yourself.
So what does that actually look like? I’ll show you.
Two screenshots. Two moods. One system-driven sandbox that hits different.
There was barely a moment to wrench the pickaxe from the corpse at my feet before I was lunging forward.
Up, up, up the dented side of the police car — sweaty palms sliding on sun-warmed metal — barely able to keep my grip on the weapon as I threw myself onto the roof and rolled to my back, panting.
Below me, a wolf tore into the teetering corpses with a wet, sucking noise I tried my best to ignore. I stared up at the sky, blue and indifferent, and considered my next move.
The needle on the gauge hovers perilously close to E, and I know my window for safe travel is almost up. Weaving along the broken pavement, dodging corpses and derelict vehicles, I spot the reddish flare of a trader’s torch ahead and steer the truck that way. She doesn’t quite make it — sputtering and clunking to a stop roughly thirty feet short of the ramshackle barn and equally ramshackle house.
Still, a win –it’s safety, of a sort.
I barter for permission to sleep in the old barn. The next night, I fall asleep to the crackle of nearby campfires, the rhythmic crunch of footsteps on gravel lulling me to sleep. Not much protection against bandits or the undead.
But better than being alone.
