Sidestone Press

Return to the Interactive Past

Fragments of Him is presented as a case study in how video games can be understood through emotional and narrative content rather than through their interaction mechanics alone.

• The report argues that labels like 'walking simulator' obscure what games like Fragments of Him actually do, and that the game deliberately prioritizes a story about love, grief, and recent social history over conventional notions of fun.
• The analysis proposes a four-part taxonomy of immersion, systems, spatial, empathic/social, and narrative/sequential, to give the vague concept of 'immersion' more precision.
• Fragments of Him is positioned as deliberately low in systems immersion but high in spatial, empathic/social, and narrative/sequential immersion, achieved through period-accurate objects, locations drawn from the creator's personal memories, and back-storied characters set in southern England between the 1980s and 2000s.