I’m back to deep IC because at least forty people aren’t trying to redefine deep IC as a flow state not unlike being absorbed in a movie, or some such thing.

Oh my God, did I really coin the term ‘immersion?’ Really? I had no idea!

Okay, now I feel an obscure desire to apologize to the world as a whole for creating a tar baby. Er…how does “Deep IC” sound as an alternative?

I always like the athletic examples of flow–a basketball player in a flow state isn’t ‘going with the flow,’ she’s interacting with it very intensely. She’s observing it, moving into it, regulating it.

Which is why it’s great that Thomas highlights different sorts of immersion. We can talk very well about a family of immersion experiences (rpg related), tracking both their identity with and their differentiation from each other. Where does the individual get that sort of attention going? Where do they have to leave it to get a hold of things? How do they experience that attention during immersion? What sort of value do they ascribe to it?

What you call deep IC may be meaningfully compared to story immersion, for example, where the comparison informs our ideas of both.

Yeah, I’m beginning to think that the subtitle is terribly misleading. I’m going to try to put a clarifying article together for tomorrow. Basically: I think that in immersion you think differently ‘less ‘meta’ So to speak. We’ll see if it makes sense tomorrow.

Thomas

Flow states are all about attention and are profoundly conscious–it is just that ‘in the flow’ your consciousness gets very pointed, very attached to whatever is the object of your attention. It doesn’t have to mean ‘I am the character’ only that ‘I am all about the character (or setting, or story, whatever).’ I think getting that on the table helps us avoid what I see as the worst strawmen of this discussion.

Thanks for dropping by. Could you expand a bit on what you’re thinking of when you use the term (either ‘immersion’ or ‘deep IC’)? Is it sort of like a flow state but exclusively in relation to character, or is it something else entirely?

As much as anything, I want to understand what it is that other people mean by the term, especially when it’s so radically different from what I usually mean…

Thomas

One of the reason I stopped is because the whole “101″ thing originally meant as a little tongue in cheek. I was intending to explain to anti-immersives why “we” are not dysfunctional. I was pretty new to the blogsphere, and much of my exposure to it was third hand, through a non-immersive player (Brand). Then I got some comments, and people pointed me at old threads and I did some reading, and realized that I couldn’t teach the 101 because what I, and the people I know were doing was not necessarily the same as what other self-identified immersives in the community were doing.

It depends on what I’m being asked to handle. Reflecting about my character, about my character’s place in the world or in the story doesn’t but being asked to think about or address other things like resource management, or what we’re going to do for dinner does.

Yes, I’m thinking something that is very much like flow here. However, I think there’s a special application with roleplaying due to a number of factors (interaction with fiction, creative endeavor, social interaction), and that it is in this unique interaction found in roleplaying that things get interesting.

Thomas

Interesting… I’m not going to ask you to expand much, since I’m sure this’ll come up in our interview, but just to clarify: You’re saying that thinking at a meta level (or acting at such a level) is unrelated to your ability to immerse, right? Or at least that while they may often be linked, they are not linked necessarily. That is, not only does handling OOC stuff not prevent you from immersing, it doesn’t reduce your level of immersion either?

I ask because that’s pretty alien to the way I’ve always experienced what I’ve always called ‘immersion’. It’s always possible that we’re just talking about different things, but I like the idea that we’re talking about different aspects of the same thing and it’s just a very odd thing. Then again, I’m avowedly a bit crazy.

Thomas

I look forward to your future posts on Immersion, Mo… after reading this comment and “Intro to Immersion 101″ I look forward to your future posts on the topic, so that I can understand what you mean by Immersion better.

Don’t get me wrong: I think this makes for a great definition, since it means, that we can use the flow model and try to apply it to roleplaying. It would also explain, why immersion means very different things to different people, since immersion in character, story (and basketball) would be possible (as you have already noted).

Thomas, what do you think of this? Would you describe immersion as a slightly altered state of mind (with focussed attention, reduced sense of conscious self…)?

Greetings from Germany
Nicolas

My participation is consciously mediated and filtered, and is in no way like the way I interact with other media.