'Immersion'

By Dick Swart on 3 March 2010

Not so long ago when I did some research about Alternate Reality Gaming, I found out that there are a lot of misconceptions concerning Immersion. Without starting definition debate #2197 about what Immersion is and what not, I think it is safe to say that it is basically the intensiveness of a person to ‘be’ in a fictitious realm and the ability to lock out his own realm of reality. A big problem is of course that it can be difficult to determine what is the real realm in which you actually live and what the fictitious realm is in which you have immersed. I think it was 庄子 who said: ‘Am I a man dreaming he is a butterfly or am I a butterfly dreaming he is a man’. The answer is unfortunately all too easy: The most boring realm in which you keep ending up after switching from realm to realm is most likely the one you actually live, pay taxes, loose kidneys and finally die in order to go to the biggest fictional realm ever conceived by human called heaven and/or hell.

Why are humans able to submerge in another world that is not there own? What is from an evolutionary point of view the usefulness of this abillity? One might expect that the ancestor in the savannah who was daydreaming of living on the moon might be at higher risk to be eaten by a lion who happened to be passing by What is the benefit of it, If there is any? I think there are two reasons why this ability has survived throughout the ages. First it is a very effective way to to train your anticipation skills. And that lady’s and gentlemen is what made us outsmart the lion and find our food before other animals did. Second I think that is a mere side effect of our ability to dream. The same processes used in our brain when we dream in our sleep are used while we are in a state of immersion.

A big misconception about Immersion is the claim that the ‘better’ the sensory information one receives, the better the immersion is one experiences. In itself the claim is correct but by ‘better’ people usually think better in a technical sense. Things like 3D, Surround sound and stuff like that but that’s obviously nonsense. A good book is always more immersive than a bad movie in 3D. You see this misconception also in toys. The better the doll or gun looks and acts like the real thing the more kids like to play with them. Everybody with kids knows that this is bogus. An old knitted doll can be a companion for life and a simple wooden stick can be a fearsome weapon during the complete duration of a camping holyday. Realistic dolls and guns sell better in shops but that is it.

Another misconception is that interaction by definition adds to the level of immersion. In other words playing the game Harry potter would immerse me more than just reading the book. People who are able to interact with the fictitious realm they are dealing with will have a more deepening experience. Yeah right. If you have been unsuccessfully trying to find that stupid sword for two hours, the immersion kinda wears of. Interaction can kill a story just as much as it can enhance it. I would, for instance, never loose time kissing my just saved wife if Freddy Krueger was still chasing me a few feet away. And I wouldn’t be overly thrifty concerning the amount of bullets to be shot in his heads either. I suppose everybody remembers their horrible and all to realistic dreams they sometimes have just before they woke up. And why was it so such a terrifying dream that you were glad you woke up? Because you weren’t really able to do something about it.

Thank god we live in a world where a simple poem can completely immerse you completely while a 3D-Game can bore you to death. In the end I think its just a question of peoples ability to suspend their disbelieve and enter a realm of their choice and making. People without much fantasy and empathy need more sensory stimuli in order to get the same level of immersion that those who have a lot of fantasy and empathy. Or they’re just plain lazy.

Pierre Gander from the Lund University Cognitive Science in Sweden wrote an interesting more scientific paper about two myths concerning Immersion.

tagged with: immersion, alternate reality