Immersion and Agency

Learnt quite a bit of new terminology during this week, such as ‘Diegetic Immersion’ and ‘Situated Immersion’, Taylor describes diegetic immersion as engaging with a game where you tune out of reality and give the game your full attention; a similar practise to as a reader engrossed with his or her book. Situated immersion is when you immerse yourself into the world of the game for example first person shooter games. This reminds me of method acting actually. I’ve been studying drama all my life and when you get so emotionally and physically attached to your character where you ‘become’ the character can seem very real in the space you perform especially on stage. You start caring this character beyond the space you are situated to (‘theatre’ and hope this makes sense) but yeah I don’t think I’ve ever played first person games apart from Need for Speed when I was a kid but don’t think I ever played to the degree where I felt situated immersion. Anyway I really wanted to play Amnesia because I know its first person and also it looked really scary when Kevin showed us in class, except I never got it working which was lame. I really wanted to compare the feeling if it’s like becoming the characters you pay on stage.  

There was a game when I was a kid where I was diegetically immersed with called Tekken Tag Tournament II. And I was very obsessed with that game to a point where I would stay up all night with my brothers friends unlocking players and learning all the backstories about each and every character, learning about the history and relationships of the characters too (I was about 12 I think) anyway I just couldn’t get enough of it and I certainly wasn’t one of those kids that just button bashed their way to victory, no I had strategy. I had one favourite character named Hwoarang where I just kicked my way through battles and I was unstoppable.

For me the experience was very thrilling. It was like reading Harry Potter as a kid; being invited into this very detailed world where you learn about all different types of character, get to know them and go on a journey with them. That’s how it was with me and Tekken. Calleja’s describes this as narrative involvement.

The game I'm always playing these days is Angry Birds. I like to play it because it’s a good way to kill time and also I'm ‘diegetically immersed’ with the text. I find great pleasure in finding strategies and tactics and making use of the resources I have (the different type of birds you get in each game) and there’s no other feeling like beating up those little pigs. There’s no possible way you could be ‘situated-ly’ immersed with this game because you are the slingshot which you use to aim at.

Moving forward with ‘agency’ which is arrived through decision making; there is very limited agency in the world play of Angry Birds due to the physics and logics of the game. I can never change the birds I'm given, even if others might be well suited nor can I change the amount of birds I'm given and I'm always shooting horizontally from left to right. But as a player you put that aside because the enjoyment of the games is thrived from its limitations especially. The more difficult it is the better. And sometimes, inside the world of the little pigs can be very difficult to get where a player is required to stop and think about the most effective way to make use of the resources presented. However I do get bored of it sometimes where I have to go away for a bit and come back to it sometime later on, perhaps simply because of its limitations. I wouldn’t mind exploring more games now where there is no limit to space and agency.