Why is Immersion Important?? Slightly Belated

I was confused about immersion in the lecture last week. Not about what it was, but exactly why it was important. Which may seem stupid, because it seems like it goes without saying that immersion is important. But when everyone started giving examples of those self-reflexive moments in games (“change which port your controller is plugged into to win the game!”), and these examples don’t ruin the playing experience, I wondered about what kind of immersion is key to the “success” of a game. If structural incoherence can be deliberately used to enhance a game, then how bad can it be?

I used to love Ron yelling "press the X button Harry!" when I played the Harry Potter games

I talked to Kevin after the lecture about it, and I got the gist that immersion isn't synonymous with a “good” game, but it is a factor in the quality of game experience. How much does it factor? Of course it came down to the frustrating “it depends”. Being unable to climb that low fence doesn't bug me as much as it bugs friends of mine. Yet if a period film includes costumes or props that are totally inappropriate for the period, the film can be completely ruined for me. I've thought about it a bit since Tuesday, and the critical awareness of a text seems to be an important part of immersion. Maybe it’s ok if you are drawn attention to the mediated nature of your text, as long as you are not yet critically assessing it. Immersion not completely wrecked.

Great. Movie ruined.

Kevin also talked about parallels in immersion with other mediums. Books tend to have standard format, page size, layout, font etc. The aim being that you are focusing on the prose, rather than what it physically looks like which could draw you away from the “aesthetic” nature of the prose and the narrative. Straight away this made me think of the author Douglas Coupland. Coupland has complete creative control over his books, down to paper, font and layout. He does crazy things with margin sizes and fonts, and he also uses the physicality of the books to tell his stories. He'll use font to create pictures and repeat the same word over and over again if that's what the protagonist is thinking about, for example. And while this brings to attention the fact that you are reading something constructed and mediated, it never ruins the experience of reading, of the narrative or the prose. Rather it contributes to it.

So Coupland helped me understand how immersion can work in games - it's not he be all and end all, but how creators play with it is important. If breaks in immersion are intentional then they can be used to great effect. Unintentional structural incoherence can just ruin everything. Coupland's also relevant because some of his best books are about programmers, including game programmers! You should totally read Jpod and Microserfs.

(Eleanor Woodhouse)