Making Sense in Ludic Worlds. The Idealization of Immersive Postures in Movies and Video Games (original) (raw)
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The term ‘immersion’ is used frequently by professional video game developers (in both the entertainment and serious/applied industries), academics, journalists, and players. However, this word can refer to a range of different modes of engagement for players and standardisation would improve discussion of the topic. This paper suggests and explains four categories: 1. 'Systems immersion' can be used to describe when players are deeply engaged with the mechanics, challenges, and rules of a game, and is similar to a state of ‘flow’. 2. 'Spatial immersion' is the sense of a player being present in, or transported to, the virtual world, and is linked to the concept of embodiment. 3. 'Empathic/social immersion' describes the connection that a player may develop towards the characters (AI or human) and the social context of a game. 4. 'Narrative/sequential immersion' can be used to describe a player’s compulsion to see how a sequence of events continues, t...
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108th Annual Psychological Association, Washington, …, 2000
Conclusion: The best video games are microworlds, which present the learner with the simplest case scenarios, yet offer increasingly complex situations based on these rules. Regardless of the comparative perceptual caveats of other media, the video game provides many opportunities simply via it’s interactive nature for future growth in the depth of experiences we can explore (with fault tolerance). Ideally, a self-aware game, which counters the players actions through a flow type mechanism, could facilitate a game world with more valuable experiences than Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill. The video game has the capability to take our present one way television absorption, and replace it with a conversation with whomever (or whatever) we choose. On the hypothetical grounds that there is a correlation between absorption (enjoyment) of a story and personal involvement, the video game stands to break new ground in human fictional experience.
Immersion vs. Emersive Effects in Videogames
Piotr Kubiński, "Immersion vs. Emersive Effects in Videogames" in: "Engaging with Videogames: Play, Theory, and Practice", ed. Dawn Stobbart, Monica Evans (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2014), p. 133-141., 2014
Author of the chapter approaches the concept of immersion from a philological perspective and concentrates on those mechanisms and effects, which weaken the phenomenon in question. All those mechanisms • described collectively as •emersive effects• • are considered in terms of their influence on the game structure, on the cohesion of the game world, and on possible interpretations. Occurring on various game levels, the emersive effects are sometimes a result of creator•s mistakes, other times they are embedded in the convention of a game. The effects in question might also be achieved deliberately • for artistic or humorous purposes. 1
What is it like to be an Avatar? The Phenomenology of Immersion in Computer Games
Immersion is a type of experience characterizing the gameplay of computer games. I propose a phenomenological model that defines the essential features of such experience. I start from the notion of immersion as a graded experience composed by three phases: engagement, engrossment, and total immersion or presence. Then, I put in relation these three grades with a phenomenological framework in which I explain how the immersion is experienced by the player. In the first phase of gameplay (engagement), players discover and learn how the game works, as well as its commands. When she has assimilated sensorimotor skills demanded by game mechanics in her body schema, the computer game as interactive medium becomes experientially transparent. The player is not longer aware of the computer game as an interactive medium, but she is experiencing a virtual environment that appears rich of affordances and obstacles for goal-directed actions. In the second phase (engrossment), the avatar turns into a prosthetic extension whose function is to extend the physical body of the player in the virtual world so to realize her intentions and plans. The experience of computer games is rooted in the prosthetic extension: through the magic of real-time control, it is like if the player is reaching directly the world of the game by means of a prosthesis, an extended arm. In the third phase (total immersion), the player feels like an embodied presence who is “there”, in the game world. I suggest that presence arises only when the player can interact with 3-D game space, and when the avatar is a navigable point of view provided by camera device. Also, the presence occurs when the player represents the game environment as an egocentric space whose point of origin is her own body, and this is possible because of body schema's plasticity. I conclude arguing the our embodied experience can be modified, reshaped, by interacting with interactive media. More specifically, the body is a nest of potentialities that can be discovered and actualized by media, whereas the physical body is only one of its shapes.
Immersion and Flow: Ingredients for gameplay
This paper examines the relationship between immersion, flow and gameplay. Immersion, flow and gameplay are conceptual constructs, which in their own way are used to denote the quality of a game. Literature often chains the construct of flow and gameplay together, but exclude immersion as a part of gameplay. The relationship between the three constructs is reviewed by looking at how a player gets in to the state of play (playing), which in this paper is argued as a precursor for getting in to a game (gaming). I also examine the concept of gameplay from a formal definition that contains a subdivision of game and play, defined by their relationship to game rules, which together compose gameplay. I also examine flow and immersion separately, which in turn leads to a review of a potential lap between the two. I also suggest an approach to understand the concept of gameplay, as being composed of playing and gaming and how immersion and flow respectively could be understood as a source of respectively playing and gaming. In the end I suggest a model for analyzing a game, through the work of this paper and use this model to analyze the game Tetris. General Terms: Design, Human Factors, Performance, and Theory Additional Key Words and Phrases: Games, aesthetics, engagement, flow, information, immersion, gameplay and relational structure
2009
What is a game? In Xenogears, Squaresoft’s classic RPG for the Playstation, throughout its perhaps 50-80 hour gaming experience, one occasionally sits through 15 to even 30 minute cutscenes and conversations, essentially similar to anime or TV shows but provided as a means of story-telling within a game structure, paced in between exploration and fighting sequences. The game’s end is fixed, its story points are triggered by set cues and its sense of dramatic development follows the traditional narrative arch. In God of War II, an action adventure for PS2, the attention given to detail is stunning, almost overwhelming (sensory overload). The gigantic architecture of colossal pillars and temples is teeming with detail and, yes, life: critters, dust, dancing light particles and crackling walls. All this is accompanied by immersive sound effects and sonic spaces. Is it a movie or a game? The battle sequences, partially choreographed but largely free-roaming, provide ample space, too, fo...