OOOOOOH you meant the actual definition, I thought you meant the company, a relative of mine works there, so I was like, HEY thats not very nice.

There is no such thing as "pure immersion". Immersion is simply the act of being deeply involved with something. It gets kind of vague there but that's what it is. You can even look it up on dictionary.com.

I read the first few posts, and scrolled to here, expecting that the entire thread would be bogged down in semantics and over-analysis. Tell me, was I right?

Russian Redneck:
There is no such thing as "pure immersion". Immersion is simply the act of being deeply involved with something. It gets kind of vague there but that's what it is. You can even look it up on dictionary.com.

... Which is why putting it up on an altar and developing elaborate theories about it, mostly based on equating it with immediacy and realism, is pointless. Yet a lot of gamers and game designers seem to do just that, all the time. It's totally crippling the pen-and-paper gaming world, for example.

-- Alex

(from my Game design teach)
Immersion is:
1 The act of experiencing something in such a way that one
(a) do not notice ones surroundings/time
(b) have been drawn in to the point of reacting to non-needed reactions (IE jumping when startled)
(c) think, not in terms of oneself, but in terms of the charcter one is experiencing from (IE O crap I just lost *insert healers name here*, Instead of, My healer just died, better res them)

I think Csíkszentmihályi's theory of Flow adescribes a real psychological phenomenon of energized involvement, and that's what is referenced by "immersion".

Photo-realistic graphics, 3D sound, emotional events, deep characters, and other elements are means of achieving immersion and are thereby important and can be described as "immersive". But, for instance, AAA graphics are immersive not because they actually fool us into thinking they are real, but because they make it easier for us get actively absorbed.

I think you are going wrong from the get go when you set up this standard: "I know I've never had an experience involving any medium -- movies, video games, flight-simulator-style amusement park rides, pen-and-paper roleplaying -- that I didn't recognize as mediated." It isn't about whether you rationally recognize the experience as mediated, but whether you emotionally respond to the experience as mediated, or if you relate to it as if it were an actual experience. If it's the latter, that is testament to immersion.

When I recall gameplay from MMORPGs and pen and paper RPGs, I tend to recall it (and describe it) as if it were a vacation or real-world incident. "Do you remember that time when we stormed the Lich King's manor, and Romodred got his arm cut off?" I genuinely don't remember it or describe it as "remember that time when were sitting around a table and Jon rolled a 1." The scene in my head of what we were playing at has replaced the actual events. That's testament to immersion.

If you *don't* get that experience, I'm not sure what appeal a pen-and-paper RPG would even have, other than as a B.S. session with friends over beer and pretzels.

I find a game immersing if (in real life) I'm walking down the sidewalk and spot a horse, reach in my bag and look for my ocarina to play Epona's Song*, but I don't consider immersion an important aspect of gameplay. I think there are plenty of games that are considered good without being immersing persay, but a game that leaves you with a feeling of enhanced stealth and extra shuriken has done a good job in reeling you in. Tenchu Z, for example, is a game I've played where I'm not impressed with the gameplay, but I get so damn into the setting that I find myself addicted.

I know that doesn't happen to everyone with every game (immersion didn't help Tenchu Z from getting mostly poor reviews), but because I'm a dork and like stealth games the immersion stole 30$ from my wallet and landed in my XBOX 360's disk tray. I agree that the concept of immersion shouldn't be considered a standard (and therfore judged), but I don't find anything wrong with a game that does immerse some players with hyper immaginations.

*has never happened to me, I swear ;-)

[EDIT] As far as designing games for immersion, I agree its a waste of time and money; shouldn't a good game immerse players anyway?

dusparr:
(c) think, not in terms of oneself, but in terms of the charcter you are experiencing from (IE O crap I just lost *insert healers name here*, Instead of, My healer just died, better res them)

This one's a problem. If all or even most games are designed with a focus on this kind of thing, you're really crippling the medium.

-- Alex

How is that a problem?

Immersion is never achievable in a game as there is little or no element of actual fear.
There's never anything bad that can happen to you, you can't be hurt by a game, or harmed in any way. So there may be the occassional shock in F.E.A.R. or some other horror game but nothing at all dangerous, and without that element of vulnerability or fear, total immersion at least, is impossible.
You could argue of course, that immersion doesn't have to be about fear, but many other things. And perhaps emotions such as attachment or hate could be ways of immersing the player. Well that's certainly very possible, we'll have to wait and see.

Essentially, the ABC that I wrote on boils down to
A=Arcade: you don't need to get into the setting to get addicted
B=Horror: you don't need to twitch to every little thing in Sanity's requiem, but you do.
C=RPG/adventure: The story, along with the gameplay, keeps you into the game.

The main part is that Immersion is not something to design around, but without it, you have problems with many, many people. (IE people that don't play to beat other peoples scores, I am looking at you XBOX live players)

For, if an arcade game is not addicting, what's the point?

No well penned arguments before I go to sleep??
:(

quadruple post! couldn't you just put that in one post?

I find immersion to be more subconscious especially with todays good graphics. The images and sounds presented in games make you instinctively do things such as jump at surprises. For example when doing a leap of faith in Assassins Creed it actually made me feel slightly queasy. So when playing games that are unrealistic you don't get effected as much.

curlycrouton:
quadruple post! couldn't you just put that in one post?

no... too tired...

Especially since post #4 had nothing to do with the rest, and post #3 was a singular rhetorical question, to which the boldness of a such a singular rhetoric, unattached to any other, is the focal point, and therefore the effect is not fully embraced without being read as such.

(HOLY SHIT I EDITED THIS 5+ TIMES)

We can nitpick all we want about the term 'immersion' but there is a clear difference between games designed for simulation, to involve the player on a deeper level, and arcade style games often intended for high scores, quick versus battles and 'achievements'.

Rather than use some long-winded explanation of how the game might connect with us on a sub-conscious or moral level, involving us in story or characters rather than game system or gameplay, interesting us beyond the realms of pick-me-up arcade games, we mostly use the term 'immersion' to describe how deeply a game draws us into aspects of it, including;

- the game's plot or universe
- the characters
- the graphical game world itself (here i believe is where the word immersion is largely mis-used to represent realism, I agree with you on that one)

Immersion when used to describe a media experience does not mean we're being jacked in to the Matrix, feeling the film or game through a VR-type simulation. What we're talking about is maintaining the fourth-wall to the extent that we no longer feel like an audience but rather an emotional participant in the game.

While I agree that immersion is not the holy grail of gaming, I think it should be for RPGs. In a roleplaying game, immersion is an important factor to a lot of people's experience, so in many respects aiming for a more deliberately immersive game world would be a bonus.

I'm of the firm opinion that any game which specifically tries to immerse the player has already failed. (Take that however you wish)

Immersion is one of those things that happens naturally... like a first kiss!

When a gamer gets immersed in his or her virtual experience, he or she doesn't even realize it.

It is simply a bi-product of a quality game and having a great time.

That's immersion, in my books.

Archon:
I think you are going wrong from the get go when you set up this standard: "I know I've never had an experience involving any medium -- movies, video games, flight-simulator-style amusement park rides, pen-and-paper roleplaying -- that I didn't recognize as mediated." It isn't about whether you rationally recognize the experience as mediated, but whether you emotionally respond to the experience as mediated, or if you relate to it as if it were an actual experience. If it's the latter, that is testament to immersion.

I think the idea of emotional immediacy is a red herring here. The frame plays a very big role in shaping the audience's emotional response. The catharsis you feel watching the climax of an awesome revenge movie is very different from the actual feelings that would be sloshing around in your head if it was all really happening in front of you, for example.

A lot of literary works are all about eliciting a strong emotional response that is very different from the "actual experience." Are they somehow worse off because of it?

-- Alex

IMO it all boils down to one simple point.

The difference between a good game and a great game is how well it draws you in, same with TV and Film. That unquantifiable time-sink that some games create is immersion in action, and different people are drawn in by different things. For example World of Warcraft draws me in for a short time then within weeks I get bored of the game and stop playing for a year or so then I go back in again. On the other hand I've lost many a day to Rock Band, horses for courses so to speak. Although what kunzer said is very true if immersion has to be a concious effort the game has failed - which was part of the reason why I didn't enjoy GTA IV half as much as the rest of the world.

Rock Band infuriates me
If people want to experience playing in a band then learn the bass or guitar or something and do some good.
of course if you're too lazy....
I can understand playing, say an FPS what with the risk of death and all that or games that enable an experience that was near impossible to achieve but sports games and music games etc. are just stupid, go and do it in real life you'll get far more enjoyment out of it.

Just out of curiosity Alex P, are you into GNS theory?

Saskwach:
Just out of curiosity Alex P, are you into GNS theory?

Familiar with it, yes. "Into" it, no. The basic idea -- some play goals are mutually contradictory -- is worthwhile; the rest of the stuff built around that (like the actual categories) kinda sucks. You'll note that GNS is an outdated model, having been replaced by "The Big Model" (which, unfortunately, still includes G, N, and S).

And, yes, I'm well aware that Edwards has said some negative things about "immersion"... I disagree with his take on that, though.

This rant is motivated more by Salen & Zimmerman (though I'm sure they'd disagree with me and I would disagree with them) than Edwards et al. The bits more specific to pen-and-paper gaming are more related to the semi-famous RPGnet "my character" rant than anything from the Forge.

-- Alex

Want immersion? Try the virtual barbershop....

It's intense. Make sure you use headphones though.

A game can't make a player immersed, but a player can make a game immersive.

Alex_P:

Saskwach:
Just out of curiosity Alex P, are you into GNS theory?

Familiar with it, yes. "Into" it, no. The basic idea -- some play goals are mutually contradictory -- is worthwhile; the rest of the stuff built around that (like the actual categories) kinda sucks. You'll note that GNS is an outdated model, having been replaced by "The Big Model" (which, unfortunately, still includes G, N, and S).

And, yes, I'm well aware that Edwards has said some negative things about "immersion"... I disagree with his take on that, though.

This rant is motivated more by Salen & Zimmerman (though I'm sure they'd disagree with me and I would disagree with them) than Edwards et al. The bits more specific to pen-and-paper gaming are more related to the semi-famous RPGnet "my character" rant than anything from the Forge.

-- Alex

Ah. I'd noticed a couple of your ideas and key words were superficially similar and wondered if they were closer than that; GNS theory strikes me as draws all the wrong conclusions from a very small common sense idea (some people like stories, some like the game, some like the world-building) by trying to categorise and segregate play styles.

curlycrouton:
Rock Band infuriates me
If people want to experience playing in a band then learn the bass or guitar or something and do some good.
of course if you're too lazy....
I can understand playing, say an FPS what with the risk of death and all that or games that enable an experience that was near impossible to achieve but sports games and music games etc. are just stupid, go and do it in real life you'll get far more enjoyment out of it.

Really wish this argument would die. I've been playing bass since fifth grade and guitar since sixth grade. I've been in several bands, and am working to get a couple groups off the ground right now. I play Rock Band because I don't want to start a cover band, and I have about a 1 in 1000000 chance of playing in a stadium. It's also a hell of a lot of fun to play against some friends or play together for a high score.

curlycrouton:
Rock Band infuriates me
If people want to experience playing in a band then learn the bass or guitar or something and do some good.
of course if you're too lazy....
I can understand playing, say an FPS what with the risk of death and all that or games that enable an experience that was near impossible to achieve but sports games and music games etc. are just stupid, go and do it in real life you'll get far more enjoyment out of it.

Your ideas are built on a very shaky foundation (that's the whole point of this thread).

Let's follow your logic to the next logical step...

Paintball is a lot more visceral than playing Halo or Team Fortress in front of a big glowy screen will ever be. You get to feel real exertion and hold a an actual paint-spewing gun and you get dirty and there's even a (very, very mild) bit of pain. You'll certainly get in better shape playing paintball than you will just sitting around with a video game, and you might even learn just a bit of real marksmanship, too -- sounds like it would definitely do you more "good" than yet another shooter. A paintball outing no harder to organize than a sports or music activity, either.

So, why aren't you playing real paintball instead of video-game shooters right now, huh?

-- Alex

Here's an aside about "theories of roleplaying":

Saskwach:
Ah. I'd noticed a couple of your ideas and key words were superficially similar and wondered if they were closer than that; GNS theory strikes me as draws all the wrong conclusions from a very small common sense idea (some people like stories, some like the game, some like the world-building) by trying to categorise and segregate play styles.

Unfortunately, it's not even that, in my opinion. You've got:
- Gamism is achievement- and competition- focused play; I think this works as a category, more or less.
- Narrativism is a very particular, very narrow set of techniques that the author(s) happen to particularly like. It's not Narrativist if the story doesn't have theme. It's not Narrativist unless we all create theme together. It's not Narrativist unless I specifically get to author X and you author Y. Sometimes it's not Narrativist unless the theme is, specifically, a moral question.
- Simulationism is anything that doesn't measure up to the bar of Narrativism: world-building, character-acting for its own sake, any form of fannish appreciation without a higher overall purpose, stories that don't make a particular kind of statement in a particular kind of way -- a useless hodgepodge category that isn't actually a category, in other words.

The older GDS classifications are pretty much the opposite. GDS Simulationism is a very narrow set of techniques that focus on reinforcing the pretense that the game world is somehow more than what you experience in play, complete with its own version of "immersion" different from the ones I mentioned in my first post, too. I see it as trying really hard to make the game's story seem emergent and natural when it really would be easier to just admit it's partly constructed and move along to the goddamn fun. GDS Dramatism then serves the role of the pointless kitchen-sink category, acting as the place you dump naive roleplaying and soapy character drama and anything else that is neither "game-like" nor part of the one really narrow category that the authors like a lot.

So, basically, both theories are kinda crap for anything other than explaining their own very narrow playstyle, in my opinion.

-- Alex

Immersion has been achieved before. Unfortunately, games try far too hard to achieve it today. I, for one, am currently hooked on the original Baldur's gate. Hooked to the level of sitting up till 5am with nothing but a bottle of brandy hooked. It doesn't try to be immersive, it just tries to create a decent D&D game for you. In the process, you end up loving the character traits and- get this- grinding. For saying it doesn't try, that's good immersion.

Alex_P:

curlycrouton:
Rock Band infuriates me
If people want to experience playing in a band then learn the bass or guitar or something and do some good.
of course if you're too lazy....
I can understand playing, say an FPS what with the risk of death and all that or games that enable an experience that was near impossible to achieve but sports games and music games etc. are just stupid, go and do it in real life you'll get far more enjoyment out of it.

Your ideas are built on a very shaky foundation (that's the whole point of this thread).

Let's follow your logic to the next logical step...

Paintball is a lot more visceral than playing Halo or Team Fortress in front of a big glowy screen will ever be. You get to feel real exertion and hold a an actual paint-spewing gun and you get dirty and there's even a (very, very mild) bit of pain. You'll certainly get in better shape playing paintball than you will just sitting around with a video game, and you might even learn just a bit of real marksmanship, too -- sounds like it would definitely do you more "good" than yet another shooter. A paintball outing no harder to organize than a sports or music activity, either.

So, why aren't you playing real paintball instead of video-game shooters right now, huh?

-- Alex

ok number 1 i do paintball
number 2, Halo OR Team Fortress 2 will NEVER be achieved in real life, the story, visuals environment, atmosphere etc.

playing in a band can be.

Immersed - Deeply occupied; engrossed; entangled.
Immersion - The condition of being immersed.

What's all this BS about actually being there? Immersion is the condition of being immersed. Immersed means being deeply occupied; engrossed; or entangled. Immersion in a game just means you're deeply occupied; engrossed; or entangled with the game. Nothing more. It doesn't mean you feel like you're actually there. It means the game is currently absorbing the majority of your attention.

Have you been playing a game and someone told you something and you said "mmmhmm" without actually hearing them? You've experienced immersion in a videogame.