I had a piece on mechanics and immersion and how they interact lined up, but I feel that my post last week was actively confusing. So I’m pushing the mechanics piece back to next week, and trying to clarify what I mean by ‘unfiltered’ and why it is significant.
To refresh memories, my definition from last week was:
A participant is immersed in an activity when his or her participation is not consciously mediated or filtered.
To clarify, because later conversation suggests this was unclear, this does not mean that players are not conscious of their participation and it does not mean that players are unable to analyze what they are doing. In order to clear things up, I am going to expand on what I mean by ‘mediated or filtered’, and then I will explain what I mean when I say that immersed players do not consciously do that.
If someone were to ask me what car I would want if I could have any car I wanted at no cost, I would require some time to consider. To provide a serious answer I would need to consider it for quite a while. There are a lot of factors involved in answering that question, and they are not factors I often consider. This answer is consciously mediated. I have to analyze, consider, and abstract in order to provide a satisfactory answer. This is conscious mediation.
If someone were to ask me ‘does this dress make me look fat’, I would not need to think about the answer, or at least not in most cases. So this is not a case of a consciously mediated response. However, I would consider who it was that I was talking to. Is it appropriate for me to respond to this person with ‘no, but your huge butt does’? Should I say ‘a bit, but it really sets off your eyes so it’s all good’? I do not have to think to find an answer, but I do have to think about whether to give it or not. This is conscious filtering
If someone were to come up to me and ask me whether or not I like icecream, I would have a response ready (’yes!’ if you are curious). I would not have to pause and consider it, I would not need to recall my past encounters with icecream and evaluate whether or not they were pleasurable. This is not a consciously mediated answer. I also do not feel that anyone should not hear my answer. I mean, I do not care if you know how much I like icecream; if you are curious, I am glad to answer that curiousity. This is not a consciously filtered answer.
It is important to note that one of the primary things that allows us to give answers that are not consciously mediated is familiarity. We do not consciously mediate walking or drinking or any number of other highly familiar physical activities. The same is true of mental activities. As we become more and more familiar with certain mental patterns we need less and less conscious guidance to do them.
The point of all this is that immersed players are interacting with the game without consciously mediating or consciously filtering. This is probably some sort of sliding scale rather than a real dichotemy, but we can probably talk about it as a dichotemy profitably as long as we do not forget that it is not really one.
The reason all this matters is that conscious mediation tends to reduce emotional reaction. When you think in abstracts, when you get the distance of consideration about a topic, you are less emotionally influenced by it. When you consciously filter your reactions, there is a tendency to shy away from dangerous topics. This is not always the case, some people actively seek dangerous and emotionally engaging topics, but I am currently thinking that filtering can not increase emotional engagement (but I might be wrong about that).
The point of all this is that immersion, by taking away conscious barriers between query for response and actual response, increases emotional engagement with play.
Tags: Theory
Again (and I know I always come back to the concept) this sounds absolutely like “flow” to me.
To sum up your point (as I understand it, please correct me if I’m wrong):
1. Being immersed, one has no (or little) conscious thought about the activity undertaken. Output given is not consciously blocked or transformed.
2. Familiarity (i.e. automatisation) can help with reaching that point.
To compare with some indicators for flow:
- Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
- A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
- A sense of personal control over the situation or activity
I see big similarities here. Concentration on the task at hand, reduced self-consciousness (not thinking about yourself or about how your actions might be seen by others) and the sense of control (in the sense, that you are up to the task, that you cannot say “the wrong thing†– which leads to not “filtering†your actions) are indicators of immersion and flow alike. Which leads me to believe more and more strongly that “immersion†is just another term for “flow during RPGsâ€. Using these concept would enable us to discern between flow with an attention focus on character/situation (“character-immersionâ€), flow with an attention focus on story-elements (“story-immersionâ€) or even with a focus on system.
What do you think?
Nicolas,
I’m not sure. I am sure that there are some important similarities, but I feel that they’re not quite the same thing… Let’s see if I can explain why…
My understanding of flow, which isn’t very deep I admit, is that it’s something of an overwhelming state in some senses. If you are in the flow of a game of basketball, you’re not thinking about what you’re going to have for dinner. Doing so reduces your flow state.
I think that immersed players can, and in many cases do, actively think about the implications of the game. They may even actively plot the game as they play (though I think this is rarer). The thing is that while a player’s interaction with some aspect of play may not be consciously mediated, that does not mean that they are not conscious of it and other things.
That may be compatible with flow, I don’t know for sure. But it is important to remember that while some immersionists are focusing on this unmediated input to the exclusion of other things, it’s not a requirement for what I’m talking about.
Thomas
I don’t just want to call immersion ‘flow in a gaming session’ but a specific sort of flow that involves certain sorts of elements (namely, setting, story, characters). I think Thomas’ talk of emotional engagement is getting us somewhere that doesn’t quite get covered just by flow.
There is a kind of powergamer (the good kind in the right game) who gets their flow on during a game–accessing rules, powers, all that nifty stuff, and going all out. They are ‘in’ the game but in a way that is non-immersive to my mind. They are ‘in the rules’ the way a physicist can get into an equation, not the way an immersive rp’er gets into a world, or a character.
Getting a powergaming flow on often blocks immersion (although perhaps not by necessity), and I have seen people uncomfortable with the immersive tendency of a session get into powergaming as a defense, as something they can embrace, but which feels ’safer’ to them.
Ian,
I’m not sure I agree here. Maybe I can explain why… Most of the time, when I’m playing a board game or a card game or even most video games, I do so in a way that either is or is remarkably similar to the immersion I’m talking about in this post.
In chess or go, I don’t play well in serious games because I don’t think my moves through. I don’t consciously project what my opponent is going to do, or plan elaborate traps. However, I do tend to play very well in fast-play situations. This is because my level of skill is not very time-dependent. I play these games in an unmediated way. I tend to make the move that ’seems’ best to me right now, without any real planning.
Now, this can work in my favor because my subconscious processes seem to be planning ahead (to some degree) for me. And I’ll suddenly find myself in a seriously advantageous position, without having consciously pursued it.
While all this stuff is going on in play, I am fully able to engage in other activities. Banter with my opponent, reading a book between moves, talking with spectators. I am not ‘lost in the game’ in any sense. But when it comes time to move, my thinking brain shuts off, I take a look at the board, and the ‘proper’ move just jumps ahead in my mind.
By not engaging any consciously evaluative processes, my play is faster. Ridiculously fast in some cases and with some games. This is another advantage of immersion, I think: it tends to provide input to play faster than other methods of decision-making. This in turn allows you to pack more inputs into a given space of real time.
Of course it’s not guaranteed that those inputs will be better than if you had thought through them carefully, but quantity does have a quality all it’s own. Personally, I get more enjoyment from playing two games of chess in an hour than one more involved game of chess in that same time.
So, is that clearer at all? Do you think what I’m talking about is actually immersion?
Thomas
I wouldn’t call that immersion, no. So we seem to split on terminology there. I’ll try to parse out what doesn’t fit for me.
Intuitively, immersion carries some metaphoric baggage for me, like dipping beneath the surface of the pool and finding yourself in a space that is quite different from the space above. You can poke your head out, look around, all that, but you need to be in a special space, not just acting on impulses whose source you can’t pinpoint.
I know what you mean about the fast play situations with strategy games and such, but that never gets me much emotional engagemet or ‘dipping’ in and of itself. Some fast play in an rp session will facilitate a certain sort of immersion if the fast play keeps me from switching out to other things–like chatting about a cool Futurama episode.
Ian,
It looks like we have a terminology split, yeah. However, I do want to address something which may be important: fast-play in strategy games doesn’t push for emotional engagement because you’re not providing emotionally-resonant input to the game.
Whether you move a knight or a bishop is not an emotionally resonant question for most people. However, whether a character declares undying love or is too shy to do so is emotionally resonant with many people.
I think that the immersion process itself is pretty much identical in both situations (assuming we’re talking about immersion as I am). The difference is the content.
Also, and I’m hoping to cover this later this month, part of what makes immersion so affecting is that we later analyze and reintegrate the material we put into the play space. It is in this reintegration, when we are no longer immersed, that things ‘make sense’. That feeling where you suddenly understand what it is about the character that made them choose one path over another? That’s one of the things I’m talking about.
Thomas
I think we really are talking about two different things here. I am interested to hear you talk more about it, because there are a lot of cool features to it. Heh, if you want to go all Myers-Briggs, I might be willing to call what you are talking about “T” immersion and what I’m talking about as “F” immersion.
Fast play only helps me with immersion if the pace somehow ‘mimics’ the pace of the events in the game. In fight scenes, speed makes the fight feel more real, for example. However, if fast play were going on with things like my character’s undying love, I won’t be immersed in it. It might be fun, it might produce a fun story that I can turn over and ‘reintegrate,’ but will not create what I call immersion.
The retrospective dimension is accidental to what I think of as immersion. It may or may not happen, but the emotion (strong or mild) occurs within the session, not after the fact. Although, that being said, I might get immersed in a ‘thickly imagined’ (cf. Geertz and ‘thick description) reintegration of a non-immersive session after the fact.
I have played in plenty of (mostly, even) fun fast play rp sessions, but a steady fast pace halts immersion for me. I often feel the slightest dipping during a session, but I need some time to dwell for the immersion to really develop.
Ian,
It’s really interesting that you bring up MB typing, because I think that what I’m talking about is set up on a split between F and T somewhere (and that immersion is about F not T), and you’re talking about something else entirely. It’s just kind of funny that we both keep referring to the same things, it makes me suspect that we’re really talking about the same thing on some level.
I think we (you and I) are rapidly approaching the limits of productive communication in the blog-commetn format. (These days I’m getting much quicker to jump to faster mediums of discussion like IM of phone, if you want to do either, email me).
That said, I’m willing to keep banging away at it, with the note up front that it’s going to be somewhat frustrating since I have trouble articulating my thoughts on immersionn well…
When I talk about ‘fast’ play in roleplaying, I’m really not talking about lots of action happening, rather I’m talking about lots of meaningful interaction with play per unit of time. ‘Meaningful interaction’ could very well mean a two-hour in character conversation about economics, it doesn’t have to be a bunch of plot-points.
Consider that when you take time to examine a choice, the more time you spend examining, the fewer total choices you’ll make in any given time. This may make your choices more powerful or thematic or whatever, but it means they’ll take longer.
One of the things that immersion does, though by no means to I consider this a primary purpose of immersion for most people, is it provides more meaningful points of contact between the player and the play space per time period.
The emotional reaction in-session is based on two things, I think. First, the higher density of meaningful points of contact means that you are engaged emotionally in tighter time periods. You have less of a chance to ‘come up for air’ and recover between each incident than if you were moving at a slower pace. Second, and more importantly, since you are not consciously considering the choices, you have less emotional distance (which is one of the features of conscious thought activities such as abstraction and evaluation).
Does that make any sense?
Thomas
I don’t think your definition is necessary nor sufficient for immersion. Others have discussed why it isn’t sufficient. I don’t quite think it’s necessary, but I think you’re on to something. Let me explain.
When I’m immersed, I do not have to consciously think about what my character would do or say or feel or THINK. I will just automatically and reflexively do (in a LARP) or describe what the charatcer would do, say what the character would say, feel what the charatcer would feel and… think what the character would think. It’s this last one that makes things tricky. There are “conscious” thoughts going on… but they are the character’s, not “mine.” (Yes there is something “spooky” about that description. I’m not sure how to clarify it further)
William,
That’s an interesting point, but I think that what I’m getting at is this (quick disclaimer: I’ve never done deep immersion of this type, so I’m speculating): the feeling that you’re actually thinking someone else’s thoughts is some sort of odd illusion-sort of thing. You’re not actually thinking thoughts not your own, what you’re doing is filtering your own thoughts through the unconscious construct of the character.
Does that sound reasonable, or is it completely unlike your experiences?
Thomas
I appologize for the length of this response and its unedited state.
Let me actually back up for a moment.
Immersion is a mental state. Defining immersion is like defining “the experience of seeing red.” Since there is no way two different persons can directly experience each other’s mental states, we are forced to resort to discussing common causes and symptoms:
Alfred: Whenever I look at stop signs, I experience a certain sensation.
Bob: I also experience a certain sensation whenever I look at stop signs.
Alfred: This sensation reminds me of warm things, and when I experience when looking at a girl’s dress, it makes me more attracted to the girl.
Bob: Hmm, the sensation also reminds me of warm things, and I like girls in red dresses.
Alfred: Perhaps we are experiencing the same thing sensation?
Bob: Perhaps
Alfred: I call this sensation “redness.” Perhaps we should both refer to this sensation as “redness.”
Bob: Ok, sure.
In the above discussion, Alfred and Bob do not know anything about the internal causes and mechanisms of redness and its impact on pyschology. All they really know is they experience something. For example, maybe the red-dress thing is culturally induced, and someone from a different culture would not associate redness with attraction. So attraction would not actually be a property of redness. However, the function of Alfred and Bob’s conversation is to try to find out if they might be having the “same” sensation - they aren’t trying to, and can’t, lock down all the properties of redness. It might even be the case that each person has a different redness experience.
Trying to explain deep immersion to someone who has never experienced it is like trying to describe redness to someone who has never seen anything but black and white. It’s hard. And just like I don’t know what causes redness, all it’s properties, what’s “really happening” when I see redness, I can’t really answer:
” the feeling that you’re actually thinking someone else’s thoughts is some sort of odd illusion-sort of thing. You’re not actually thinking thoughts not your own, what you’re doing is filtering your own thoughts through the unconscious construct of the character.”
My only response is “I don’t know. I experience this sensation. It seems to have some properties associated with it. It seems other people also experience something with certain simular properties, including people at RGFA, and they call it “deep immersion.” I will call my experience deep immersion as well.”
I can also say that this sensation, labeled deep immersion, is distinct from another sensation, which I associate with “really into something.” (This is what I think people are getting at when talking about flow.) Flow != immersion in the same way white != red, even if they share many or even all the same properties that can be described. (Take Bob and Alfred’s conversation above, but substitute white for red.) It is unfortunate that everyday English uses the same word, immersion, to describe being very focussed on something, and Deep Immersion into character, which yields a different sensation (for me).
William,
No apologies necessary :)
Now, in the interests of disclosure, it’s worth me mentioning that I have devoted more time to the study of color theory than is really healthy. That means that I’m familiar with most of the major theories that try to explain what color is and how it works from both external and internal viewpoints. So some of that is feeding back into my thoughts on immersion.
Anyway, to take the color analogy a bit further, I think that deep immersion is something like red, and story immersion is blue, and (it might be possible that) flow-states are yellow. They’re not the same colors, but they are all still colors. At some level, they’re the same thing.
That’s the level I’m working at for now. Of course knowing what colors are generally is a different thing from understanding the hundreds of various shades of red and how they interact, but it’s something worth knowing, right?
Personally, and again without experience with it, I think that deep immersion is actually just a special application of immersion in general. It seems different because what you’re immersing yourself in isn’t an activity in the traditional sense, but rather it is a persona. The immersing itself is the same ‘mechanically’, but it makes a huge difference that you’re immersing in one thing instead of another.
Again, you’re the one with the experience here, so I ask: does that seem plausible, or does it still strike you as off?
Thomas
Actually, let me also answer your question more directly. I have a naturalistic world view. I do not beleive in spirits and ghosts and collective consciousness and other planes of existence and so forth. So therefore, logically, I must agree with you - deep immersion must be “some sort of odd illusion-thing.” I must be “filtering… [my] own thoughts through the unconscious construct of the character.” Where else are these thoughts going to come from?
But you know, to be quite honest, when I’m experiencing deep immersion, it IS kinda spooky. It does toy with my sense of identity. It does make me wonder about whether there’s only “one consciousness” inside my brain. The word “spirtual” does come to mind when I experience it, and I’m very much not a spirtual guy.
My deep immersion experiences also remind me of my experiences with meditation. Both yield a sense of “loss of self.”
That’s…. possible… maybe….
One thing comes to mind - it might be possible to be both story immersed and deep immersed. Part of the point of deep immersion is to take a character who is in a life-threatening/emotionally powerful situation, and then experience her emotions from her point of view. If the character is “immersed” in her environment, then you’ll be vicariously immersed.
There’s an example from RGFA (I think) where someone (sorry forgot who) claimed he/she was in a deep immersion state. The character was in a dramatic situation, and the GM reached for the dice at a critical dramatic point to decide the character’s fate. At that point the player and/or character gasped in horror seeing the dice shaken up and hitting the table. The metagame tool (dice) helped trigger heightened anxiety for the player? (simultaneous deep immersion and story immersion?) the character? (Deep immersion nested with story immersion) both?!? (%$#$?)
You know, makes me think of an excercise: is it possible to be double deeply immersed. People at cons have run games where you play roleplayers playing a game. So there’s a player, a PC, and the PC’s PC. Would it be possible to deeply immerse twice… Someone has probally tried this somewhere… maybe at like a LARP, where you play actors who are using method acting techniques in their play… Or a double agent in a spy LARP… The closest I’ve ever personally experienced it was a game of Diplomacy. Diplomacy requires lying, which can be facilitated by immersion, but also requires lies built ontop of lies in horrible nested webs of deception. Delightful game :)
So I don’t know what the above possibilities mean for the color analogy… since you usually can’t see something as having two colors at once?
“Personally, and again without experience with it, I think that deep immersion is actually just a special application of immersion in general. It seems different because what you’re immersing yourself in isn’t an activity in the traditional sense, but rather it is a persona. The immersing itself is the same ‘mechanically’, but it makes a huge difference that you’re immersing in one thing instead of another.”
This might be right, but I’ll phrase the mechanism I personally typically experience explicitly:
I start off in “actor stance”, I am consciously and deliberately dictating my character’s actions. Then I construct a “virtual machine” or a “second consciousness” (I mean these as analogies - what is actually going on, I do not know, but these analogies roughly describe what it feels like) to represent my character. I am still deliberately and consciously deciding what my chararacter says and does, but now on occassion I get input, without conscious direction from “myself - the primary consciousness”, from the charatcer’s consciousness. Maybe an echo of a feeling, or a response to what an NPC says. Sometimes I get nothing, however. This stage is what I associate with RGFA character or weak immersion stance.
Gradually, I give more and more “mental CPU” to the character consciousness. As this happens I get more automatic feelings and dialogue and thoughts from the character consciousness. My primary consciousness becomes slower, fainter, isolated from outside stimuli. In this sense the process of deep immersion is somewhat simular to becoming immersed in a movie/book (ignoring outside world) and very simular to “zoning out” as sometimes happens when watching lame TV or driving while bored.
Eventually the primary consciousness goes completely asleep - if it weren’t for the secondary consciousness I would be zoned out, or possibly meditating. HOWEVER, there is the secondary consciousness. And it becomes the total focus of my being. Now I directly and immediately feel what the secondary consciousness feels - I THINK what the secondary consciousness thinks. It is as if “I am” (the concept of personal identity gets pretty murky at this point) the secondary consciousness. (Again, this is meant only as a metaphor, and only as a description of what the experience is like to me. As far as whether there “really is” a new personality/consciousness or is just an “illusion” I have no idea) This experience is simular to being zoned out, closer to meditation, but it is different to both. By this point it doesn’t have much in common with being deep into a book/movie/activity except in the sense of what it takes to snap me out of deep immersion.
So there are simularities between these different types of immersion for me, but the differences are striking and qualitative.