Viscerality

From YoYoGames Wiki

Viscerality is a term referring to the realism, immersion, and how much a game sort of "pulls you into it". Viscerality can be perceived through quite a few different ways and forms, the most current of it being used in professional, industry standard video games. The biggest part of Viscerality is the gameplay marriage between the player, and the game in perfect unity. As game makers, it is imperative that we take advantage of as much Viscerality as possible, to get more users sucked into the game. Another big part in Viscerality is graphics. You have to make the gamer stop looking in the outside world, and start looking into your game for its good gameplay, and beautiful graphics. The third thing that plays in part to add to the Viscerality in a video game is Sound effects, and background music throughout the game. The sound effects give a game the feel of smoothness, while the music gives the player the mood of the game. If your sound effects can perfectly match the gameplay of your game, and the sound effects can be easily distinguished as "good", or "bad", then you will have a user that is very happy to play your game. If the music can fit the gameplay, then you will have very involved players, as they will know how to play the game with the tempo of the music, and know what to do in the game with the sound effects pointing right or wrong.

All in all, Viscerality is how involved the player is, and how much the game involves the player, and with these many things in mind, remember that there are many other things in which can denote Viscerality in your game. I have all ready written about them in Markup 14, so you should read those there. Also keep in mind that I will be writing about them in future Markup issues, so you should keep your reading glasses close and handy as I write more and more about Viscerality.