Yeah, I agree with Brand. Immersion is totally a viable mode of play (or, really, a bunch of viable semi-related modes of play) that, for a number of reasons, didn’t necessarily get a ton of traction in the indie games scene and still doesn’t, really. Probably a bit more in the Nordic-influenced larp branch, but we’re still very into author-stance transparency these days on the tabletop side and actually design a lot of mechanics which build on or require that stance, making immersion less likely.

For me personally, I prefer immersion and the intimacies that it provides to be an emergent property of play rather than something we intentionally drive towards: if it happens, it’s because the players really resonate with each other and what we’re doing, but my design and play methods assume that we have to make do without it, partially because they’re made for playing with random strangers or other people you may not want to be intimately immersed with. I feel like that’s about the traditions of practice that I come from and the contexts in which I normally play games, where I’m not typically prepared to support folks who want a more immersive or emotional experience.

That said, simple info-distribution stuff doesn’t have to be a gateway towards full immersion or anything (whatever people take that to mean). It can just be another technique in your bag of tricks that is sometimes fun to use, whereas other things might be more transparent and author-stance-y.