What is "Emergent Gameplay?"
Lastly, we've arrived at what is without a doubt the most defining feature of an Immersive Sim: emergent gameplay. This is the core reason why many people play Immersive Sims, and without this the genre wouldn't exist. While it can exist in other genres, it is usually not placed front and center. Immersive Sims, however, design their entire gameplay loops around it.
Emergent gameplay is where player-driven decisions and various different systems combine together to create unique scenarios. These scenarios can be completly unintended by the developers of the game. They are created organically through all of the different rules that the game has in place. It usually comes about when a player tries to solve a problem using the tools that they have available to them.How Does it Play Out in-Game?
To give an example, recently while playing through Prey (2017) I entered a room with an aggressive enemy with a lot of health. I did not have strong enough weapons to kill him effectivly, so I had to get creative. The enemy AI was programed to patrol around the room in a predictable pattern (provided it did not spot the player). I snuck around the room picking up the explosive canisters that were laying around and I brought them all to one spot that the AI would walk accross. I used a stun gun to shoot one of the barrels as it walked past and the combined explosion did enough damage to kill it in only one try.
This was a solution to a problem that I came up with naturally. I used the tools I had at my disposal to construct a trap that could only be brought about thanks to the game's multiple systems (picking up objects and moving them around, explosive canisters, the stun gun, enemy AI, the stealth system, etc).So now that you know what an Immersive Sim is, what are some great games you can play to get into the genre?