Immersive Sims as a Genre

Just a quick post here about a thought I had after hearing some discussions going on about the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 and how it will be a true "immersive sim".  First, for those who may not have heard the term, it is loosely defined as games that "are primarily concerned with making players feel as though they are truly experiencing a believable world by creating mechanics that feel appropriate and logical within the game world and try to avoid feeling arbitrarily 'Gamey'."  Elements of an immersive sim would be things like believable and realistic physics and AI, multiple paths and solutions to every situation, the world of the game remembering player actions and reacting to them, non-linear world/ missions, and more but those are some of the most important ones.  There were games that fit this category long before, but the term really gained prominence with the game Deus Ex and the level of freedom, choice, and realistic reactions that could come about from any of the player's many possible actions.  

Thinking about immersive sims, and what it meant for a game to be one, made me pause.  If I boiled it down to a personal definition it would be something like: A game that allows the player to chose how they want to play, proceed and interact with the game world, or not, and the game will react in a believable and realistic way to those actions.  There was a problem with that, however.  That definition isn't something that should be attributed to a genre of videogame, but to videogames as a whole.  One of, if not the primary, defining elements that separates videogames from other mediums is its interactivity, right?  The fact that we are participating in the medium rather than passively observing or absorbing it.  To me, immersive sim is a way more appropriate name than videogames for the entire medium.  Videogames are meant to be immersive in ways that other mediums are not, participation, and are simulations of anything and everything.  The term 'videogame' only implies that it is entertainment played through a visual medium at best, and that antiquated term sells the entire medium short.  

On the other hand, the fact that we can classify some games as immersive sims and others as not shows that the medium hasn't reached that full potential quite yet.  I'm not implying that every game needs to be what we consider now to be an immersive sim, but do believe that just about every game could benefit from striving to include more elements from that 'genre'.  Having the game adapt and react to your actions beyond the action of shooting leading to the enemy falling leads to greater immersion, engagement, and creativity.  Not to pick on Call of Duty, but I recently played through one of the campaigns and can say that I went through not even thinking of other ways to approach situations beyond shooting.  Yes, there were stealth and vehicle segments that varied how I shot things, but never once did I think to try and sneak up on an enemy and hold him at gunpoint for information, or to flat out refuse to attack the enemy and surrender, or consider that the enemy would surrender, because I knew I didn't have those choices.  Even in games where you're lead to make wrong decisions, such as unknowingly killing innocents or comrades, you're more often than not forced to do it even on repeat plays where you know not to do it.  Player choice, player immersion, is just way too narrow in most games to really justify the entire medium adopting the banner of immersive sim.  

I hope that the industry does move more towards the design philosophy of what we now call immersive sims.  Again, not everything needs to be an open world RPG that reacts to every time you cross the street against the light, but am I wrong in thinking that even the most linear of games couldn't be made just a little bit better by giving more meaningful choices to the player, and then rewarding, or punishing, them for those choices?  I get that game development is incredibly difficult and creating things that some people won't ever see is often the antithesis of a lot of game design, but I can't be the only person who gets a kind of special feeling when I come across something in a game I know not everyone else will.  Plus, a lot of what makes immersive sims what they are is the fact that things happen 'naturally' instead of being scripted.  Yes, bigger moments would fall into that category of designing for part of the audience, but not everything would.  In my mind these qualities just make the game, well, more immersive to me.  The game recognized what I did and produced these results just for me.  I think that's the most powerful strength of this medium, and we've only just begun to explore it.