[-empyre-] Immersion

[Gordon Calleja]

Thanks Patrick.  The reason for going down the path of proposing my own
term - which is always a risky move, especially in an emerging field
littered with new concepts vying for attention - was that existing terms
that referred to the same experiential phenomenon (the sense of inhabiting
a virtual space) , presence and immersion, were based on what I felt were
shaky theoretical foundations.  Aside from the vagueness that immersion has
accrued over time in game studies and related fields, both it and presence
assume a here and there relationship, a portal through which one goes
through to leave the real/physical/everyday behind and enter into the
virtual other-world.  This binary is problematic as a foundational
perspective of the experience of virtual environments as it flies against
several schools of thought on consciousness and being.  It obviously stems
from viewing the virtual space as bounded rather than continuous with the
everyday world.

Incorporation side-steps that problematic perspective and instead
conceptualises the experience of virtual environments as an absorption into
consciousness - as a "bringing here" rather than "going there" - while also
requiring an awareness that the user has a systemically upheld embodiment
in the virtual world.  These dual requirements - the absorption into
consciousness and systemically upheld embodiment - make it more restrictive
in application.  The latter is a good thing, in my mind, as too often
experiential or other ephemeral phenomena become understood too vaguely due
to their overly elastic conceptualisation.

Gordon

On 14 October 2015 at 17:58, Patrick Keilty <p.keilty at utoronto.ca> wrote:

> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> Gordon, I would love to hear more about incorporation, as a space that
> affords an expression of agency within a cybernetic circuit. Meanwhile, I
> am dashing to the library to grab your book to read more about it!
>
> Patrick Keilty
> Assistant Professor
> Faculty of Information
> Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies
> University of Toronto
> http://www.patrickkeilty.com/
>
> On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 6:43 PM, Gordon Calleja <gordon.calleja at um.edu.mt>
> wrote:
>
>> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
>>
>> Hi all and thanks to Patrick for inviting me to join the discussion
>> here.  I have been researching and writing about games within Game Studies
>> for over a decade now, so the perspectives I offer here will be marinated
>> in ludic sauce.  The bulk of my game research has tackled the experiential
>> side of games.  I have been particularly interested in analyzing the nature
>> of player experience and have aimed to contribute both a more nuanced
>> understanding and talking about player experience as well as offering an
>> alternative way of thinking about the fuzzy concept of immersion.
>>
>>
>>
>> Immersion is problematic because it tends to roll all forms of
>> involvement with interactive media, especially forms of virtual
>> environments, into one type of experience, at times plotted on a continuum
>> of intensity but seldom acknowledging the variety of experiential forms
>> that come into play when dealing with complex media artefacts such as
>> games.  So immersion is used to signify general absorption with a game or
>> virtual environment, as well as the sense of being in the simulated
>> environment, at times referred to as “presence”.
>>
>>
>>
>> The second problem arises when we consider the latter experiential form:
>> the sense of inhabiting the virtual environment.  The real and the virtual
>> are plotted, erroneously, on two sides of a divide with the metaphors of
>> immersion and presence implying a move from one realm to another.
>>
>>
>>
>> My research, contained in *In-Game: From Immersion to Incorporation *(apologies
>> for the shameless plug), argues that the first problem requires a better
>> understanding of the various dimensions of involvement in virtual
>> environments and games, along with an appreciation of the difference
>> between attention, involvement/engagement and presence/immersion as
>> different layers of cognition and experience.
>>
>>
>>
>> The second problem argues for conceptualising immersion and presence not
>> as a dive into the *virtual other*, but an absorption into consciousness
>> of the virtual environment, what I have called *incorporation*, as a
>> space that affords an expression of agency within a cybernetic circuit.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Gordon Calleja
>> Associate Professor and Director
>> Institute of Digital Games
>> University of Malta
>> Malta
>>
>> Associate Professor
>> Center for Games Research
>> IT-University of Copenhagen
>> Denmark.
>>
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>
>
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-- 

Gordon Calleja
Associate Professor and Director
Institute of Digital Games
University of Malta
Malta

Associate Professor
Center for Games Research
IT-University of Copenhagen
Denmark.
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