Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
in itself (Nakamura & Csíkszentmihályi, 2002).
Flow even shares some properties with immersion,
such as a distorted temporal perception and lost
or blurred awareness of self and surroundings.
Jennett et al. (2008) argue that immersion
can be seen as a precursor for flow experiences,
thus allowing immersion and flow to overlap in
certain game genres, while noting that immersion
can also be experienced without flow: Immersion,
in their definition, is the “prosaic experience of
engaging with a videogame” (p. 643) rather than
an attitude towards playing or a state of mind.
One important question in the discussion about
flow and immersion is whether flow is a state or
a process. Defining flow as a static rather than a
procedural experience would be in contrast to the
process-based definitions of immersion such as the
challenge-based immersion
of Ermi and Mäyrä
(2005). This kind of immersion oscillates around
the success and failure of certain types of game
interactions. Another important differentiation
between flow and immersion is that immersion
could be described as a “growing” feeling, an
experience that unfolds over time and is dependent
on perceptual readiness of players as well as the
audio-visual sensory output capabilities of the
gaming system. Past theoretical and taxonomi-
cal approaches have tried to define immersion as
consisting of several phases or components. For
example, Brown and Cairns (2004) describe
three gradual phases of immersion:
engagement
,
engrossment
, and
total immersion
, where the
definition of total immersion as an experience of
total disconnection with the outside world overlaps
with definitions of telepresence, where users feel
mentally transported into a virtual world (Lombard
& Ditton, 1997). The concept of
presence
is also
discussed by Jennett et al. (2008) in relation to
immersion, but defined as a state of mind rather
than a gradually progressive experience like im-
mersion. If we assume for a moment that immer-
sion is an “umbrella” experience, immersion could
incorporate notions of presence and flow at certain
stages of its progress. It remains, however, unclear
through what phases immersion unfolds and what
types of stimuli are likely to foster immersive ex-
periences. In what situations is immersion likely
to unfold and what situational elements make it
progress? When does it reach its peak and how
much immersion is too much? More research is
needed to investigate such questions, as well as
a possible link between
high engagement
and
addiction
, as studied by Seah and Cairns (2008)
or the differences between
high engagement
and
addiction
as suggested in a study by Charlton and
Danforth (2004).
the scI Immersion Model
Ermi and Mäyrä (2005) subdivide immersive game
experiences into
sensory
(as mentioned above),
challenge-based
and
imaginative
immersion (the
SCI-model) based on qualitative surveys. The
elements of this immersion model account for
different facilitators of immersion, such as, the
experience of elements (in a gaming context)
through which immersion is likely to take place.
The three immersive game experiences Ermi and
Mäyrä give implicitly provide different immersion
models of static state and progressive experience.
Sensory immersion
can be enhanced by amplifying
a game's audio-visual components, for example,
using a larger screen, a surround-sound speaker
system, or greater audio volume. If immersion is
actually facilitated in this way, immersion would
be an affective experience, as evidence points to
the fact that enhanced audio-visual presentation
results in an enhanced affective gaming experience
(Ivory & Kalyanaraman, 2007). By jamming the
perceptive systems of players (as a result of men-
tal workload associated with auditory and visual
processing of game stimuli), sensory immersion
is probably also a facilitator of guiding player's
attention (see Reiter, 2011). This strengthens the
hypothetical link between attentional processing
and immersive feeling found in related literature
(Douglas & Hargadon, 2000) but, while the link
remains, the cognitive direction is the reverse of
Search WWH ::
Custom Search