Long-term immersion

There has been a substatial amount of academic work in game studies that reflect upon the immersion of the player, or rather the willing suspension of disbelief(Frasca, 2006) or active creation of belief(Murray, 1997). From immersion viewed as a direct interaction with a game; conceptualizing models that explain, among others, the attentional resources used by the player during playing a game(Calleja, 2007a, 2007b, 2011) to examinations of how the player can be observed to distance himself from the game to not only contemplate tactical and strategical actions within the game, but also bridging the implicit and explicit messages of the game to the player's reality outside of the game world(Frasca, 2006). In the space between the direct interaction with the game and the outside world scholars have also examined the hardware interface's, keyboard and mouse or controller, effect in the players possibilities for immersion(Kirkpatrick, 2009). These though primarily reflect on what I would call a short-term immersion: being 'in the zone' brought on by an amalgamation of player and game. That said the authors referenced above do not completely disregard a long-term immersion, though the handling of playing a game as a player-centric ergodic process leads to the feeling immersion being broken when the phone suddenly rings, the player gets up to get a refreshment, or when the game-session ends and thus seems to lead to a slight disregard for immersion when the player is not actively engaged. Long-term immersion in academia seems to most often be linked to effects that players profit, or suffers, from from long-term engagement with games and virtual worlds, such as losing connection to the real world by trying to quick load when an accident happens(I have done this a couple of times) or note that the player name is missing above the cashier in the supermarket.

There seems to be a lack of focus on immersion in a game when the player is not actively engaged in it. Frasca do touch on the subject briefly in the explanation of mechanical outmersion, where a player “critically analyzes it's[the games] mechanics and rules, looking for patterns that can lead to the solution of a problem or the understanding of a system. […] Analysis and strategy-making are purely mental processes”(Frasca, 2006: 3). When this mechanical outmersion is combined with the concept of The Tetris Effect one can begin to see a pattern of long-term immersion. The Tetris Effect is an psychological effect where a person may experience moving images at the edge of their visual field, when they close their eyes, or when they are drifting off to sleep. The images are based on a prolonged exposure to a certain activity such as coding for programmers that lead to dreaming lines of text, mathematicians seeing numbers or equations, or seeing blocks falling after having played Tetris all day. Sea legs is also considered a type of Tetris Effect, where a person might experience an illusory rocking motion while on land after a long time on a boat. When considering The Tetris Effect as a possible state of mind and the mental process connected with Frasca's mechanical outmersion it seems plausible to move closer to a long-term immersive state where the player is considering short-term immersive aspects and factors of a game, such as Calleja's six immersive involvement elements(Calleja, 2007b), which will subsequently be available for the player to actively use in the next game-session(assuming the player can remember it).

This would mean that immersion in a game for a prolonged amount of time could lead to mechanical outmersion and subsequently The Tetris Effect during which tactical and strategical game actions are considered which is then applied directly in the next game-session. The long-term immersion that is generated contributes to the player being able to immerse themselves in the game much quicker, since the last immersion in the game was not when the game was last played, but several both conscious and subconscious episodes while away from the game. Observing these immersive states of mind in a way that produce results that are applicable to academic studies do pose a problem though. Frasca explains how these internal, mental processes cannot be observed by a third-party and interviewing players risks triggering a conscious understanding of the origin of a subconscious effect(Frasca, 2006: 6). Frasca's hate-mail examples solves the problem of proving meta-outmersion, but in the case of long-term immersive tactical and strategical decisions it is not a viable method of gathering evidence since a player might simply have an epiphany over a puzzle he was not able to solve in the last session and completes it within the first few minutes of the next session. Without a reliable way of examining when and where the solution of the puzzle came to the player, without having to ask the player directly, the study of how long-term immersion affects short-term immersion in games and the solution of strategical and tactical challenges has hit a roadblock.

Bibliography:

• Calleja, G. Digital Games as Designed Experience: Reframing the Concept of Immersion. Victoria University of Wellington. 2007. (2007a)
• Calleja, G. Revising Immersion: A Conceptual Model for the Analysis of Digital Game Involvement in Situated Play, Proceedings of the DiGRA 2007 Conference. 2007. (2007b)
• Frasca, G. Immersion, Outmersion & Critical Thinking. 2006.
• Murray, J. Hamlet on the Holodeck. Free Press. 1997.
• Kirkpatrick, G. Controller, Hand, Screen: Aesthetic Form in the Computer Game in Games and Culture, April 2009 4, pp. 127-143. 2009.