Yahtzee's recent review on Oblivion raised a very good point about gaming. One of the aspects that makes gaming so appealing is that you as a player, contribute to the story and thus become more immersised. He gave a couple of good examples like the one about thief 2 but I'd like to hear some examples from the escapist communities about immersion examples, perhaps ones that have actually happened to you.

Immersion is after you've played world of warcraft, go for a drive and pass a police car,you wonder if you aggroed it.

Immersion is when you walk down a busy street after playing GTA 4 and think "bad car, bad car, alright car, bad car, nice car! (prepare to steal)"

Immersion is when you've been playing Splinter Cell for hours, stop, then find yourself looking for the best shadows to hide in.
Immersion is when you've been playing Burnout: Paradise for too long and find yourself trying to press Boost in your own car.

Yassen:
immersised

Is that even a word?

Immersion is when your playing a game and you forget what your playing is a game. Everything in you peripheral vison blurs until only the screen remains. When a game makes you jump an inch of your seat which shock and fear it's an immersive game.

karn3:

Yassen:
immersised

Is that even a word?

Immersion is when your playing a game and you forget what your playing is a game. Everything in you peripheral vision blurs until only the screen remains. When a game makes you jump an inch of your seat which shock and fear it's an immersive game.

I'm immersed pretty quickly then...

Immersion is when you've been playing GTA4 for too long, then suddenly get the urge to smash a car window with your elbow when you pass by a car outside.

Immersion is when you play too much BF2142 and start muttering 'Mediiic' when you need help.

This one isn't mine, so yeh Immersion is when you've been playing too much Mass Effect, and when you get a burn in real-life, yell out for Medi-gel.

Immersion is when you play Burnout and wonder what you could crash your car into that would get the most points (I highly advise not going for a drive right after playing Burnout :P).

Immersion is when you play Resident Evil and you're afraid to use the bathroom because it's right under the window.

Immersion is when you play GTA and pass a guy who got pulled over, wondering what his wanted level must have been considering the police force around him (fun car game!).

Immersion is when you play Metal Gear Solid and start walking around ready for CQC.

Immersion is when you play Assassin's Creed and go for a walk, sitting on benches and listening in to people's conversations.

Immersion is when you play Silent Hill and then hear your car radio start getting static. Suddenly you look for Pyramid Head for a couple seconds.

Immersion is when you go into a room, and start to 'think in portals'

Immersion is when you play Fable and start to find blonde people more trustworthy.

Immersion is when you play team fortress 2 then try to mend your 360 by hitting it with a spanner.

Immersion occurs when I get up from a video game and my latest encounter with real life reminds me of my first encounter with video games, confused and helplessly lost.

Immersion is when you play STALKER (or any FPS, but in STALKER, cover is essential to survival), and start avoiding areas in real life because there's not enough potential cover available or there's too many ways an enemy could flank you. I've been hesitating to enter certain rooms and areas recently because of this.

Immersion is playing Alien Resurrection, then jumping out of your skin when the microwave goes beep.

Immersion is playing Half life two, then checking the ceiling for Barnacles.

So...is immersion when something in the video game spills over into the real world?

I was pretty immersed in 'Tie Fighter' when I was driving in my car and found myself seriously wishing there was a match speed button in my dashboard.

L.B. Jeffries:
So...is immersion when something in the video game spills over into the real world?

No, not necessarily. Immersion is also when a game-world goes together so well that it actually starts to become believable. When you feel like you really are in that world instead of the real world.

I guess we're just going with the flow.

Immersion is when you've played Goldeneye/Perfect Dark and any time you see a surveillance camera hanging anywhere, your hands start to aim at it in reflex

Immersion is when you've played the difficult Goron Race of Majora's Mask so many times before you finally finished it, that when you're canyoning in the mountain and you have to make a far jump into a freefall of many meters into a pond somewhere below, that when the guide counts up, you actually start running after 2 so you would economically jump right a nanosecond after 3 has been said.

That was dangerous >.> scared the hell out of him, grabbing me last minute

Immersion is that you're so accustomed to tools like Photoshop, that when you're drawing with pen and paper you wonder where CTRL-Z is

Not mine but from a friend; Immersion is when you've played so much SIMS, you're imagining emotion balloons over people's heads

But that's not the immersion I'm looking for in games anyway. I want the game world to 'come alive' when I'm in it, not that it comes alive in me in my world. wrong way :p

So...is immersion when something in the video game spills over into the real world?

that. I think it can go 2 ways. you can become part of the game world, or the game world becomes part of you. Or maybe those always go together, dunno. First sounds like the 'real' immersion while this thread is about the second. Immersion does not always comes only with realistic worlds. 'Immersed in tetris' is the much used example

Immersion is playing Zombie Panic Source, when you eye your surroundings and attempt to get as high as possible.

Or immersion is playing Mass Effect, and only talking with good, neutral or evil answers.

Immersion is when, after playing MGS4, your thumb involuntarily reaches for the Start button when someone is telling you something really uniteresting, forgetting you can't "Skip" what they are saying.

Yassen:
One of the aspects that makes gaming so appealing is that you as a player, contribute to the story and thus become more immersised.

I'm going to disagree with you here. The interactive aspect of gaming does not make it more immersive, just immersive in a different way. (I'm not even going to go into how in most games you don't contribute to the story so much as just connect the dot of the pre-planned story the developers have set up) When I came out of the movie Twister and drove past a farmer's field on my way home, I was scanning the horizon for tornadoes. (Yes, I know that movie was dumb. Sue me.) My point is, immersion happens when immersion happens and I call bullshit when gamers of any stripe try to sell the idea that gaming is more immersive than other media solely because of interactivity. I find the interactivity hampers immersion. Which is why those games that manage to be immersive are so special. If all games were immersive by the very nature of gaming, immersion would be a useless concept. But they're not, so it isn't.

As for my own stories... well, they're stupid, such as hopping around the bleachers at school like I was Q*bert or something. What can I say, I was a stupid kid with an overactive imagination.

Immersion is when, after you've been playing Hitman, you start designating targets in the street and wondering how to covertly assassinate them without being witnessed or leaving evidence.

Immersion is also, for me at least, when something shocks you in the game and, instead of actually jumping backward in fright, you press S and the spacebar to make your guy jump backward out of fright. This happened when I'd used the inflate tool in Gmod on a vortigaunt's head. I shot at him and he whips his head round to look at you. Scared the crap out of me when his head, particularly the central red eye, was that big.

Immersion is when i've been playing Bioshock and i go out and try to shoot bees at people from my hand

Immersion is when i've been playing Fable and ask the barber which haircut will make my evil stats go up

Immersion is when you're going for a walk, come to a fence and then try to hit space to climb over it while wondering where the fuck your gun is after too much Call of Duty 4.

Immersion is when you're playing Phoenix Wright, and show genuine concern for the defendant when the judge is about to declare "GUILTY".
It actually accomplishes that often.

Immersion is when you've just played SimCity4 for 3 hours, and when you go for a walk you wonder why your mayor zoned all this Heavy Industry right next to a park or why he hasn't torn down those slums and placed a few flower gardens and plazas so they can develop into $$$ level Apartment buildings.

Immersion is when you have just spent too much time playing SoSE and you try to bribe a policemen by giving him 300 crystal.

Immersion is when you've played Dead Rising too long, and start looking for pistols in the garbage cans of your local mall...

Immersion is when you've been playing mortal kombat too long, and feel like ripping off a person's head, that you don't like very much.

I think Paul Barnett of Warhammer Online gives the best description:

Immersion is playing Half-Life, and not realising that the house is burning down, and that your wife's left you, and you haven't eaten for a week.

Not particularly fancy, but oh so true.

Immersion is when you've been playing Assasin's Creed too long and as you walk past any moderately sized buildings you think to yourself "I could climb that."

Immersion is when you look at your friendly grandfather and think "he might as well be wearing a tee-shirt: I will die or turn evil."

karn3:

Immersion is when your playing a game and you forget what your playing is a game. Everything in you peripheral vison blurs until only the screen remains. When a game makes you jump an inch of your seat which shock and fear it's an immersive game.

You are right. In my definition immersion is when you lose yourself in the game. The good examples given here are more of a re-adaption to normal life after having been immersed. Humans are adaptive species and our foremost senses are sight and hearing, so when we play an immersive game our mind adapts itself to the gameworld and we are "lost" in it. A good notion for it is when you're not noticing other things happening around the screen.

The examples here are more of what happens after you've played an immersive game and you have to adapt again back to the normal life, therefore I call it re-adaption.

My best example of re-adaption was when I was going with a carton of milk to my friends room and he suddenly walked out. Reflexively I pointed the milk carton at him as if it was a gun and spilled some on the floor. We had been playing halo3 for 5-6 hours.

Immersion is when you try to swat a fly with your wrench, while playing Bioshock.
Immersion is when a sneaky little bastard plays Starcraft's "Nuclear launch detected" sound clip on his cellphone and you immediately panic.

I was gonna try to make an immersion joke with second life buts its kinda hard

Immersion is when you watch a cutscene in MGS4 and completely forget that it's a game, dropping your controller in awe as a result.

Immersion is when, after playing Gears of War, you go to the gym and try to lift absurdly heavy weights.

Immersion is also when, after you play Crysis, you look at a 10 foot fence and think "I could jump that easily".

We cannot bring up a topic about immersion without me talking about Star Ocean, the second story (my favorite game ever)

This is a game where you can assemble a team of eight from about twenty unique and interesting characters and also takes into consideration how much they like you (as decided by what you say to them) throw in the option to pick between two main characters to play as (both of which unlock their own unique party member) and you can have up to seventy different endings.

It also makes you feel for and like each person in your team. you feel as though they really have their own cause for fighting. a feat so many games try to accomplish, buy few do.

Now that's Immersion

Immersion is when you suddenly realize your in your local outdoor store loving on all the guns because the crowbar can only please someone so much.

Immersion is when, after playing d2, You find your self outside practicing with a bow and arrow. The javelins are still on back order.

^_^

Don't know how you can be "immersed" in a game. Ah a zombie! PAUSE *get food* listen to custom soundtracks, kinda ruins it.

shatnershaman:
Don't know how you can be "immersed" in a game. Ah a zombie! PAUSE *get food* listen to custom soundtracks, kinda ruins it.

You've missed the point. If you are immersed in a game, you don't pause and get snacks. Have you really never been so wrapped up in a game that you've played it for hours without realising?