This should have gone up yesterday, but my webhost was unfortunately down. That’s why you’re getting it today. Hopefully you’ll be able to forgive me.
In the ancient dawn of civilization, also known as the tail end of 2002, Emily Care had a post over on the Forge in which she tried to explain Why immersion is a tar baby. It’s a good post, and something to keep in mind as a serious influence behind this one here. Because, you see, I’m going to try to explain why I think immersion is a tar-baby.
I stated at the beginning of this month, when I kicked off the whole ‘immersion month’ thing, that I believe that almost everything that everyone calls immersion is, ultimately, the same thing at some level. The problem is finding that level, and then identifying that unifying similarity. This task is made terribly difficult by the fact that the term is used by so many different people to describe things that are so seemingly different. Figuring out what the actual similarities are is no simple task.
And the difficulty is only ratcheted up by the way that the topic is discussed. It is this mode of discussion that, as far as I can tell, lies at the heart of the tar-baby problem. The problem is that most people, when they discuss their own immersive experiences, tend to resort to a sort of mystical explanation.
To some degree this is fairly natural since it tends to be difficult to explain how the mind works from the inside. And this is further complicated by the fact that immersion seems to be, by its nature, opposed to abstraction. That is, immersion is what it is, in large part, because you aren’t thinking about it.
In a recent discussion online (on Adam Dray’s ‘Foundry’, if anyone is curious) on the topic of immersion, Mo pointed out that one of the problems when discussing immersion is that people who tend to immerse also tend to talk about it as a sort of mystical process. Phrases like, ‘it just happens’ and ‘I don’t think about it’ and sometimes ‘I become my character’ get tossed around, and then misinterpreted.
This is a very solid observation, I think. Part of the problem with discussions of immersion is that they try to capture a purely-internal idea, one that most people don’t try to study in other people they’re with, and explain that idea to someone who likely doesn’t have the context to know what you’re talking about.
All of this stuff seems to ‘lay the blame’ for the problem at the feet of the people who are doing immersion and trying to explain it, but it’s not all their fault. In fact, I think a significant amount of the blame lies at the feet of theorists, and I think I know why.
The Forge’s ‘Big Model’ is typical of most design-focused theoretical frameworks for roleplaying in that one of the major elements of analysis of actual play is reward cycles. Especially procedural reward cycles. This is intensely problematic when discussing immersion because immersion is an internal process and it is self-rewarding.
Since it is internal, immersion can only be self-evaluated, at least for most people. I can not turn to you and judge your level of immersion. While I may be able to infer, based on past experience playing with you, that you are immersing to some degree or another, I can’t tell just how much or how well.
Since it is self-rewarding, that is: immersion is an activity that you work toward because you enjoy it, not to get some dependent reward from it, most players don’t care to evaluate themselves for rewards since they are already being rewarded. Perhaps a bit more clearly: since immersion is an end goal of play, and as far as I know, no one has come up with a metagame resource that can be expended to help you immerse better, immersion does not fit into traditional understandings of reward mechanisms.
In some sense, from the viewpoint of those who are not immersionists, talking about ‘immersion’ is like talking about ‘fun’. There’s no way to productively understand it using the models that they are used to.
Immersion’s internal nature fits poorly with a reward-cycle understanding of roleplaying games, so how should we understand immersion? That’s a good question. I’m hoping some of you will have some good suggestions…
Thomas
Tags: Theory
I think this is the first time I’ve seen this written down and I tend to agree very much. Immersion, at least as I know it, is a self-rewarding cycle; the more you slip into it, the more intense it feels (and this has very little to do with the intensity of the game itself - the experience can be intense even if you’re - that is, your character is - sipping coffee at the cafeteria and having a chat).
Good point about the self-rewarding element of it–makes me think that if you want to encourage or enable immersion (two different goals), you need to develop structured play that supports it. If supported, those who enjoy it will pursue it. While this gets us back to trying to parsing out different sorts of immersion, here are two (little) things likely carry to different versions of immersion.
First, I think some sort of boundary setting–that distinguishes the game space from the not-game space. The degree and sort of boundary probably varies with people and style of immersion, but what Mo is calling a kenotic immersive (deep IC), probably needs a pretty strong barrier to maintain the space, while a story immersive may just need a ‘hey, this is story time, don’t sidetrack us with movie trivia’ barrier.
Little game rituals could go a long way in this regard–ritual phrases, designated play space, defined in-game and out-of-game time, so on. It could be full-on ritual, or just little habits, gestures, etc. that cue everyone to get their game hat on. (I should point to people like Mo, who pointed out a link to a similar idea on the Forge by Meguey…if I could access story-games, could probably locate link, but no luck right now…that was mostly in reference to ’safe-space’ but I think most immersion probably requires ’safe space’ of some sort).
Second, I bet you props help people immerse, especially good props, that have weight, texture, feel, that evoke a world or story. I remember a friend talking about a game he played where the G0M had mapped his world, and he always posted the map behind him when he GM’ed–for my friend, that totally drew him into the game, made him feel like he was somewhere else. It gave him a sense of scope and mystery.
Reduces to: Establish the boundary, invoke the world. Which sounds a little like theater, too…
Ian,
I believe you are referring to Meg’s Ritual in Game Design post on the Forge?
Anyway, at this stage in the game, I’m just feeling my way around supporting immersion, but I think that there are actually going to end up being ways to actively encourage people to immerse, not just to ‘get out of the way’ while people immerse. We’ll see.
Thomas
Yes! That is the post. I think the ritual angle is exactly one place to go for encouraging immersion–up the ritual component, people start to be carried along. It clearly isn’t the only one. I wonder what we could take from therapeutic discussions of ‘active imagination’–how much shared ‘active imagining’ of a session beforehand lays the groundwork for good immersion. My own experience seems to indicate something like these things help, although may require more ‘maintenance’ within the session to sustain.
I agree that immersion is mostly its own reward. Related to that is the fact that outside structure & reward systems aren’t necessarily going to be much help in achieving immersion. The immersive is to a large extend dependent on his/her own techniques and experience; outside help can only do so much.
This is pretty much the same thing any hypnotist will tell you: All hypnosis is self-hypnosis; the hypnotist can only facilitate, while the subject does the actual work him/herself.
That said, hypnotic communication techniques can be very successful in inducing immersion. Visualisation techniques, careful choice of words & use of voice, even breathing exercises can help a person immerse more.
Matthijs,
That’s true, but I would point out that one of the big things that reward systems have been used for in the Forge model of design is encouraging players to use new techniques that assist them in achieving their goals. This is probably something I’ll cover more in-depth in an article in August sometime. Anyway, the point is that I’m pretty sure that the right reward system could teach you new techniques to be used in immersion, and possibly even help you to immerse in new things. Maybe.
Thomas
Hey, thanks for stopping by.
Yeah, at least it’s one of my goals. Immersion is something that a huge number of roleplayers self-identify as the single most important component to play for them. Understanding what it is and how it works will hopefully allow us to develop better techniques for facilitating immersion in game design and for achieving immersion in play. Sure we can just use trial and error and slowly improve stuff intuitively, but I also just really like to know things…
Thomas
Something like this? when you engage in using ritual phrases (i.e. careful use of words) you get a bonus die? Or, perhaps better, when you use ritual phrase, you can access certain narrative privileges?
To use my own examples: when you bring in a prop or participate in boundary setting ritual, you get some narrative privileges in the game? It sounds like that could work well–especially if the reward for participating in the boundary setting were the props which you could then play in the game to guide the narrative in some way. Perhaps even have different types of props depending on the role taken in the boundary setting, with different props being better-suited to different sorts of immersion (i.e. rewarding behaviors that feed into certain kinds of immersion)? Like:
“You are the bearer of the book, whose task it is to care for the story and the characters within it”
“You are the bearer of the knife, whose task it is to manifest the guardian persona within the tale”
“I, the guardian, lift the knife, invoking its spirit against [x challenge]“
A thought/warning: If after the first experience with the technique, it helps with immersion, the player will voluntarily use the technique, rendering additional rewards for the tecnique pointless. If after the first experience the technique proves to be disruptive FOR THAT PLAYER, then continuing its use becomes worse than useless.
Then realize, that different techniques work differently for different players. So even if you found a way that worked 90% of the time for immersion, subsidizing it more than once will still be on net harmful.
As far as the first use, maybe that might work - although it strikes me as a bit paternalistic. Can’t even get players to try something once, just once, without a metagame reward?
There’s also a possible theoretical issue. Others have observed elsewhere that in the threefold model gamism and dramatism can be for some players be linked - gamism as having a metagame goal of winning the game; dramatism as having a metagame goal of making a good story. They are both metagame goal driven. Therefore, if you design a game where the game goals produce good stories, you can unify the two goals together, creating harmony between gamists and dramatists. I suspect this is why manipulating reward structures can work so well sometimes. But no such logic applies to immersion - at least not deep in character immersion.
Interesting topic. I prefer a simple explanation.
For me, immersion is role-playing. Getting into character, becoming the character is immersion.
It’s all about the actor stance, pawn stance is an anathema to immersion.
Improv (done well) encourages a purer form of immersion than RPGs.
JJ,
Thanks for dropping by. I’m always hesitant and a little cautious when people try to define one specific thing as ‘what roleplaying is’. I’m going to twist your words a bit to make my point, but I think I can demonstrate why…
You say ‘immersion is role-playing’. That implies a number of things that I think are counter to my own personal definition:
1. It implies that roleplaying is a personal, rather than social, activity. I should be able to ‘become my character’ without other people around. Since my personal definition of roleplaying involves social interaction, this seems like a contradiction.
2. It implies that people who utilize method acting techniques are roleplaying. Even if they’re making a movie or acting in a play. Again, this seems not to be roleplaying to me.
All that said, I do think that there are many people who equate the two. People who would say that if you’re not immersing you can’t possibly be roleplaying. Further, most of these people insist that you’re only roleplaying if you’re immersing in character. Immersing in the setting, or in the story, or in whatever else just doesn’t cut it. And that seems pretty elitest to me.
That said, I do think that you might be right in some ways. I do think that immersion and roleplaying may be necessarily linked, but only if immersion is understood more broadly than it usually is. Maybe using the model I’m proposing, maybe using a different one.
Thomas