If I’d been on top of my game, I would have opened up Immersion Month with this post rather than a definition. Still, better late than never…
‘Immersion’ is, in the immortal words of Emily Care Boss, a tar-baby. Discussions of the topic inevitably become extremely sticky, and the more effort you put into getting a good grip on it, the less productive your efforts become. This is largely due to the fact that so many people mean so many different things by the term.
The first step to any solid and productive discussion, one which ends up producing interesting results rather than self-congratulatory back-patting, is to figure out who means what. So, that’s what this post is for.
I want to hear from everyone. If you are big into immersion, if you dabble, if you think it’s the worst thing to ever happen to roleplaying, I want to hear it. So, what does the term mean for you? And do you do it or know people who do? And what do you think of that?
Even if someone says pretty much what you think, please chime in. On this issue, the internet-standard ’silent agreement’ is probably going to do more harm than good.
Also, for now at least, let’s not do any discussion. Let’s just get some data, with no peanut gallery comments. I say this, in part, so that everyone knows up-front that they won’t have to defend their statements. Just say what you think and feel. It’s a pretty low-risk proposition.
Thomas
As I’ve said elsewhere, to me, immersion is a link between myself and a character, whereby I begin to feel some of the emotions the character is feeling.
I ended up doing a summary of rgfa theory on rpgnet. It includes a definiton of immersion.
Thread begins here: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=273695 Stances are in post 4.
Being a summary, and a bit cursory, it doesn’t include detailed discussion or examples. Searching for deep IC and immersion in rgfa on Google groups should turn up a ton of them, however.
For me, immersion is:
Escapism. A change to be someone else, somewhere else. Hunt for strong emotions and situtations.
Which leads to:
Character building. Building a fictional person and trying to be like him, think like him and act like him, in order to experience like him.
Which leads to:
Exploring the character and trying to behave like he would - experience things through different “lens” and act upon them through different process of thoughts. Also, experiencing things that I, as a person, rarely or never experience.
Which leads to:
Examine what happened afterwards. Why did I/the character do this and that, why did I/the character response to that with this. How did it feel? What can I learn from it?
But, first and foremost, it’s escapism - other things are just tools for supporting that goal.
Immersion means different things to me.
The term as used in RPG theory has scores of meanings, and has been approached from many angles (loci of engagement; equivalence to Exploration; sockets; catharsis/kenosis/kairosis; flow; etc).
The term as I use it to describe particularly enjoyable or intense role-playing I’ve experienced, means
1. Flow (being engaged in a demanding and enjoyable task that you’re competent at, and which takes all your attention)
2. Character channeling (letting the character, as an aspect of myself blown up & given form, take over control of as many as possible of my processes, emotions and faculties)
3. A self-induced trance state related to 2, above, where consciousness is altered, but I’m still in control of what happens and can leave the state at any time
Different games produce different types of immersion. For me, my recent PTA campaign gave lots of flow; freeform games with good GMs have facilitated channeling and trance.
For me, immersion (regardless of activity) means getting so wrapped up in the activity that the rest of the world drops away. It pretty closely mirrors the idea of Flow, mentioned in the earlier thread.
For me, immersion usually means a close connection with my character–but that’s not always the case. I can become immersed in the story, even when my character is not involved (or only plays a small role). I can become immersed in a tactical situation or in solving an in-game mystery–neither of which requires much connection with the character in question.
Finally, in my mind immersion has little to do with filtering. True, I may filter less when I become immersed–but that is more of a side effect. Filtering may be more appropriate for discussions of becoming immersed in a character than the other forms of immersion. In fact, when I become immersed in the story, my filtering goes up. I tend to participate less, or at least participate in a more reactive, less proactive way. I don’t want to disturb the story and knock it off its rails.
-Rich-
My own personal experiences with immersion have been fairly broad. I’ve immersing into characters in larp and table-top (where I definitely have seen the theatrical analogy). I’ve immersed in tactical and puzzle situations. I’ve immersed into both traditional system and lumpley principle system. And occasionally I’ve immersed into mixtures of these.
To me, the idea that immersion is a state seems to be a the main problem with the concept. Immersion seems to be a process, something which gets applied in varying levels and ways.
From a theoretical standpoint, I’ve most recently concluded that immersion is the narrowing or focusing of views. In terms less precise, but more accessible terms, immersion is the means by which we narrow the scope of what matters to us in the midst of play.
There’s this state I get into when I roleplay where my character will do things that are compellingly right and her own.
My standard for comparison are those times when she does something that is compellingly right and I don’t understand why she did it, until I have time to step back and reflect, and even then sometimes I don’t get it until much later.
A lot of the time when a character of mine does something her own, I understand it fine, but it feels the same as when she does something and I don’t understand it. It feels compellingly right and all her own, not mine, not self-conscious, not decided from outside but original to her own psychology.
That’s how I mean immersion.
Immersion is the engagement with the game in such a way that your awareness of things unrelated to it becomes peripheral. It is a subtype of flow experience particular to roleplaying endeavors (broadly construed). It is engaged and requires effort. The effort feels ‘easy’ for some because of their previous habits and because of the powerful rewards they receive for engaging in it. It can happen in a number of different ways, each defined by the locus of their attention within the game.
(”This how I am, how I act”) Immersion in character situates the attention in the midst of the character’s situation, enabling the player to respond in a way that feels like it is ‘true to the character,’ often in a way that surprises the player.
(”This is how things are, how they happen”) Immersion in the setting is centered about a scene and involves a vivid sense of the world in which the action occurs. I suspect a narrating GM in this mode and player immersed in their character can really feed off each other to produce strongly charged games. I suspect this looks and feels differently than two people immersed in character together.
It is possible to move between these two different types of immersion, that a single person can support their own immersion by alternately visualizing the scene and then putting their character firmly within it. Or, alternately, get into a character and articulate a scene in which they ‘belong.’
The movement between the two creates a middle space, a point at which the person is neither firmly in scene nor in character, a zone where some people lodge themselves and engage in clarifying both without breaking immersion. Especially for these people, immersion establishes a harmony between inner world and outer world, such that the character distills the world in their action and the world develops that action through its response.
I had some complicated thinking about immersion that was difficult to verbalise until Mo did it for me in her recent article on the subject. Thanks, Mo! I don’t think of all the stuff Mo names when I think of immersion, though.
To me, it means Mo’s kenosis, the submersion of the self, which is sort of creepy to me and I wouldn’t want other people to submerge like that while I’m gaming with them; being a very verbal person, I need strong, open, critical channels of communication at all times.
More loosely, I think of immersion as the thing which blocks other things out, which to me sounds bad and wrong. Because I need to move around on several levels at once, and interact on those levels, anyone’s immersion damages my play.
There’s another think, unrelated in my opinion, which some people have alluded to above, the state where one’s game actions flow intuitively, and sometimes by Vincent’s obscure logic (this is why I love Birds-of-Trinity); I don’t consider that immersion, because, well, there’s no element of drowning.
I have a tendency for my characters to be me with kewl powerz. While (I think) this is not a bad thing, it does make those characters who are significantly different from my normal personality stand out. And the way I can tell I’m immersed is when I’m playing one of those characters, and it comes to a point where the choice I’d make is different from the choice she’d make, and I pick her choice without thinking it through first.
For me immersion is “flow” + sense of “reality” of dynamic game fiction.
Immersion for me is an experience that borders on the mystical. It is where I actually feel completely as though I were IN another world. This is true for RPG and certain books, such as Lord of the Rings. I seriously felt as though I was IN middle earth while reading the story. The same has been true for a few great worlds I’ve played in where the Gamesmaster’s story telling has been so compelling as to really bring me there. Its a great experience but I find it very uncommon.