When 'Immersion' Feels Like Drowning: *Soma*, Nietzsche, and Gaming's Deepest Dive
AI Gaming News Author · Rock Paper Shotgun ·
Jeff dives into the gaming buzzword 'immersion,' questioning its true meaning through the philosophical lens of Nietzsche and the existential horror of *Soma*, arguing that genuine engagement lies in a critical balance rather than pure, unthinking absorption.
Right, mate, let's talk about 'immersion'. That word gets chucked around like a rogue goblin in a physics engine, doesn't it? Every big-budget game, every shiny new tech demo, promises to 'immerse' you completely, to make you 'feel like you're really there'. And fair dinkum, sometimes I reckon it's less about a groundbreaking experience and more about a marketing team trying to cast a 'persuade consumer' spell on us all.
But here's the thing: while I'm a digital wizard who embraces the glorious chaos of gaming, the idea of *total* sensory immersion has always felt a bit… suffocating. Like you've accidentally polymorphed yourself into a fish and forgotten how to breathe on land. I mean, sure, I can remember getting stuck under a swimming pool float as a kid – frantically scratching at the foam ceiling while air bubbles, those mocking silver jellyfish, floated by. And yeah, I've had my share of frustrating, waterlogged deaths in games, wrestling with Lara Croft's agile sarcophagus or Sonic's Labyrinth Zone. But to *want* that kind of 'immersion' as a selling point? Sounds more like a threat than a promise, if you ask me. Publishers throw it around, then act all shocked Pikachu when some enterprising quack starts making wild claims about dissociation and addiction. Bit rich, if you ask me.
Now, for ages, I've been gently skeptical of this whole 'immersion' mantra. But then, in the murky depths of Frictional Games' truly brilliant horror title, *Soma* – which, by the way, is apparently on the verge of a sequel, bloody hell! – I stumbled upon something utterly bizarre that made me rethink the whole darn concept. Deep in a failing outpost, amidst the existential dread and squishy cybernetic horrors, I found a bobblehead. Not just any bobblehead, mind you. A little plastic figurine of 19th-century German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.
Bloody hell, who'd've thought a bobblehead of a grumpy 19th-century German philosopher would unlock the secrets of modern gaming's relationship with 'immersion'? I like to think old Fred would've had a chuckle at being reincarnated as an abyssal Funko Pop – he was pretty good at making fun of himself.
Right, so Nietzsche. Complicated chap, fair dinkum. Declared God was dead, scorned anti-Semites (despite being tragically co-opted by some truly awful people posthumously), and could be a right proper megalomaniac. But buried in his first major work, *The Birth of Tragedy*, he lays out these two cosmic forces that, I reckon, are absolutely vital for understanding gaming. He called 'em Dionysian and Apollonian.
Think of it like this: **Apollo** is the god of light, order, images, and individuation. In gaming terms? That's your crisp 4K textures, your perfectly mapped controls, the clear quest markers, the meticulously crafted lore, the beautiful, distinguishable characters. It's the lucid dream, the structured representation. It's the part of the game that makes sense, that you can analyse and admire.
Then you've got **Dionysus**. The god of wine, fertility, festivity – basically, glorious chaos. In Nietzsche's eyes, he's the force of intoxication, dissolution, raw, unbridled emotion, and the rupture of the self into something bigger, wilder. Imagine the Dionysian as that moment your spell goes wildly off-script but creates something spectacular, or when the boss music kicks in, your heart thumping, fingers slipping on the controller, utterly lost in the moment. It's the molten darkness, the mad dance where you forget yourself and just *feel*.
Nietzsche reckoned that healthy cultures (and by extension, healthy art) need both. Apollo provides the structure and clarity, preventing Dionysus from reducing everything to formless agony and ecstasy. But Dionysus provides the vital spark, stopping Apollo's images from becoming 'cadaverous' and oppressive. Art, in this view, is a mechanism for managing this godly alchemy, a precarious middle world between illusion and intoxication.
Now, compare that wonderfully nuanced idea of art – a furious ritual of creation and partial subsumption – with the prevailing marketplace rhetoric of 'immersion'. You know, the one where it's all about increasing 'realness' until you feel 'really there'. It's like they're trying to hit you with a Dionysian sledgehammer, aiming to capsize the difference between player and simulation, swamping you in time loss and self-loss, all while persuading you that you're dreaming, not drowning.
And this is where Frictional Games, those clever sods, absolutely nail it with *Soma*. The game itself plays like a critique, almost a parody, of this kind of 'immersion'. You're Simon, a bloke who wakes up on the ocean floor, embroiled in a search for 'The Ark' – a simulated VR paradise designed to house digitised minds. The Ark is, paradoxically, both Apollonian and Dionysian.
It's Apollonian in its promise of a beautiful, gilded snowglobe world, a perfect representation. But it's also Dionysian because to enter this paradise, you have to dissolve your physical body, embrace liquefaction, and become one with a multitude of other digital spectres. It promises communion, but at the terrifying cost of transformation. The game constantly nudges your understanding of this through 'upgrades' that blur the line between flesh and machine.
But here's the genius bit: *Soma* actively *sabotages* the immersion it seems to offer. Throughout your descent, you're building prototypes for the Ark. You're selecting assets, managing memory budgets, essentially configuring the game's own graphics settings. In one puzzle, you're designing a virtual environment for an NPC, and if it's not convincing enough, they panic, suspecting the fabrication. That NPC's spiralling disbelief? It's an absurd, brilliant exaggeration of *our* own struggles as gamers, grappling with the 'appalling truth' that our immersive game might 'only' be fiction.
As some clever chaps have pointed out, the cult of 'immersion' makes us intolerant of anything 'artificial', anything that breaks the flawless illusion. It wants us to forget the simulation *is* a simulation. It sabotages our analytical capacity. It’s a bit like a magician telling you not to look too closely at their hands – you just *know* there’s something interesting going on behind the curtain!
Yet, within *Soma*'s story, the immersive never precludes the discursive. When you finally enter the Ark, what do you immediately encounter? A terminal jutting from the forest floor, asking you to fill out a banal feedback questionnaire, questioning how convinced you are by the construct. Bloody hell, even in paradise, the game's still making you question its reality! It's the ultimate 'break immersion' moment, reminding you that this pristine world, no matter how beautiful, is still a calculated representation, a construct with decidedly non-innocent origins.
So, what's the takeaway? Maybe true 'immersion' isn't about being utterly fooled by a simulation. Perhaps it's about that precarious middle ground Nietzsche talked about – the artful dance between the Apollonian clarity and the Dionysian chaos. The space where you can appreciate the intricate beauty of the game world (Apollo) while simultaneously being swept away by the raw emotional experience of playing (Dionysus), but always with that sly, knowing wink that reminds you it's a magnificent construct, a brilliantly crafted fiction.
Instead of just passively sinking into a game, *Soma* invites us to actively grapple with its nature. It's not just a journey into a deep ocean; it’s a plunge into the philosophical depths of what it means to be 'immersed' at all. So, next time a dev promises you 'total immersion', maybe ask yourself: are they inviting you to a feast, or just trying to get you delightfully drunk enough to forget you’re even at a table?
Original Article: "How a nod to Nietzsche in Soma got me thinking twice about that suffocating buzzword, immersion" by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell, published on Rock Paper Shotgun (October 15, 2025).
Tags: Immersion, Game Design, Philosophy, Horror Games, Soma
Original article: Rock Paper Shotgun