Reader, I am confiding in you that the following post contains the most research I have ever done for Negative Edge. What does this research entail, you ask? It’s quite simple, really: I read a book, that being Gordon Calleja’s In-Game: From Immersion to Incorporation. I mention this because books, even books specifically about video games, seem to so often be outside of mainstream discussion of games. But why this book specifically? I’ve been struggling for a long time with how games writers and gamers talk about games, specifically as it pertains to immersion. I have my own idea of what it means, but it can feel like everyone else is talking about something different. So surely an academic like Calleja can set the record straight, right?

A Brief Summary

It’s both a reassurance and a frustration that Calleja starts by explaining how even academics can’t seem to agree on what immersion is. The first main distinction he introduces is between immersion as absorption and immersion as transportation. The former is the experience of being so engrossed while playing Tetris that you lose track of time; the latter is the feeling of experiencing a secondary world. The former, immersion as absorption, is something that’s hardly exclusive to video games. One can easily lose track of time while reading a book, gambling at a casino, or doing any manner of other engrossing activities. The latter, immersion as transportation, is also not exclusive to video games, but video games possess unique characteristics that facilitate immersion as transportation in ways that are not possible otherwise. It is this version of immersion that is most germane to this discussion.

Calleja goes on to divide immersion as transportation (hereafter referred to just as immersion, unless immersion as absorption is also invoked) into several different categories of involvement, all of which together serve to create a sense of immersion. The different forms of involvement are separated by the author to better discuss them, but it is important to understand that they are experience holistically and each individual dimension reinforces the others. They are as follows:

• Kinesthetic involvement: the experience of motion both as the player controls the game and as their in-game character moves based on those inputs

• Spatial involvement: the experience of navigating and interacting with the game’s virtual environments and the perception of the environment as a real place rather than as a representation of a place

• Shared involvement: the interaction between the player and other agents within the game, whether they be human- or computer-controlled, and the perception of a relation between them

• Narrative involvement: the experience of both the scripted story of a game and the emergent narrative as defined by the player’s actions

• Affective involvement: the emotional reaction inspired by the game

• Ludic involvement: the choices made by players in pursuit of their goals, either set by the game or by the player, and the outcomes of those choices

From these, it’s easy to imagine a generalized scenario and see how they interact with each other. The player is given a quest, which sets a ludic objective. The quest comes with a narrative that gives context to this objective. The quest takes place in a designated environment, creating spatial involvement, but this involvement in enhanced by how the location is defined within the narrative. The completion of the quest requires the player’s input, both in traversing the environment (spatial) and in completing the mission (ludic). Completing the mission also creates shared involvement. In a multiplayer game, the player may be on this quest with other players, and interactions with these create an emergent narrative, but even in a single-player game, there are the characters who assign quests, characters who stand in the way of their completion, and characters who complete them, and there is a perceived relationship between them, enhanced by the narrative. The completion of this quest produces an emotional response from the player, that being the culmination of the satisfaction of completing their goals and their response to the aesthetic and thematic elements of the quest. While each dimension is identifiable, the complete experience of immersion is more than the sum of the parts of the player involvement model.

Another distinction identified by Calleja is the distinction between micro-involvement and macro-involvement. In short, micro refers to the experience of playing the game in the present and macro refers to how much the game persists in their mind when they aren’t playing it. This could be thinking about techniques and strategies, imaging how the characters in the game might exist outside of the events portrayed within, and discussing the game with friends, among many other things. Crucially, Calleja identifies the macro phase as existing both before and after play. To illustrate, one could be involved before play by thinking about what they might do in-game once they play, and they could be involved afterwards by reflecting on their experience after the fact. This does suggest the macro phase depends on knowledge of the game whereas the micro phase is capable of imparting that knowledge. One could, however, possess knowledge of the game without having played it through indirect exposure, whether that be through official marketing materials, games media, or independent content creators. This dimension is understandably beyond the scope of Calleja’s book.

Calleja concludes by explaining that immersion can give way to the deeper experience of incorporation. This is the most theoretically complex part of the book. Incorporation involves two different axes. First, the player must internalize the game’s virtual world as an interactive, navigable space. Secondly, the player must be embodied within the virtual world by the player character or avatar. The player perceives the virtual world (assimilation) while also feeling that they are perceived (embodiment). Consequently, Calleja identifies kinesthetic and spatial involvement as the most important dimensions of the player involvement model, as it is spatial involvement that gives the player a world to assimilate and kinesthetic involvement that gives the player the the ability to interact with said world. The other dimensions enhance the experience, but those two are requirements. The dimensions must also be balanced, as a period of emphasis on a specific dimension will come at the expense of others.

My Own Interpretation

Reading Calleja’s book was hardly my first time pondering what makes games immersive. It’s been on my mind for most of my years of gaming, and Calleja’s book has helped to solidify my own understanding of the concept. I generally agree with Calleja’s model of player involvement, and most specifically the idea that while there are identifiable dimensions, they all exist in the context of each other. The point I think went overlooked by Calleja, however, is that immersion depends on a degree of consistency between the various dimensions. Every game will express itself through these dimensions differently, but an individual game should be expressed consistently along each dimension. In a game like Devil May Cry 3, heavily stylized action is very much in keeping with the aesthetic and narrative sensibilities of the game. Contrast this with Resident Evil 5, where the acrobatic feats of the protagonist feel at odds with the darker tone of the setting and story as well as even the ostensibly survival horror-oriented gameplay.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume immersion depends on realism. Neither Super Mario 64 nor Super Mario Sunshine can be said to be realistic, but Sunshine is leaps and bounds more immersive than 64 due to the nature of how its world is designed. Levels in Super Mario 64 are referred to in-game as courses, and understandably so. While they give the impression of corresponding to places, they ultimately feel more like obstacle courses designed with the sole intention of engaging the player in platforming. Levels in Super Mario Sunshine are instead designed to resemble real locations, being cities, beach resorts, amusement parks, and so on, each with inhabitants and missions that have some grounding in the setting.

Much as Calleja identifies a synthesis between assimilation and embodiment, I believe the consistency of design applies to both the world design and how the player interacts with the world. It doesn’t matter how well-designed the world is if the player’s interactions with it don’t make sense. Invisible walls marking off the boundaries of the environment are a textbook example, instantly yanking the player out of the virtual world and into the reality that this is a game with boundaries. But it’s a matter not only of what the player is able to do but also how the environment reacts to the player. When the player has their character swing a sword at a vase or fire their gun at a window, they expect something to break, and depending on the complexity of the game’s simulation, they might expect it to go beyond that. One will expect deeper simulation from a tactical stealth game than they would from a fast-paced action game. But all of this is downstream from the player’s ability to break things to begin with.

Freedom can be counterproductive, however. An iconic example is in Watch Dogs, which gives the player a button prompt to vault over the grave of protagonist Aiden Pierce’s niece. Similarly, a common occurrence in games is the player being told of an impending battle of great importance that narratively should require immediate action, but the player can choose to put it off as long as they like. It follows that giving the player unrestrained freedom is not conducive to immersion, as it would give the player the capacity to undo immersion by their own hand. It is possible, however, that creating a strong enough sense of immersion could dissuade the player from such anti-immersive behavior. Calleja briefly discusses the concept of the magic circle as established by Johan Huizinga, which states that play is defined by a voluntary acquiescence to rules, but dismisses its relevance to video games in which rules are enforced by the program. The concept could apply, however, in as far as the player can choose to make decisions to enhance the immersive experience even when it is sub-optimal from a ludic perspective. A classic example is the player in an RPG who chooses not to equip the new armor they’ve earned because, despite having better stats, it doesn’t look as cool. Paradoxically, giving the player too much freedom can break immersion, but giving them even more can allow them to rebuild it on their own.

A Matter of Perspective

An argument I’ve frequently encountered is that first-person perspective is the most conducive to immersion as it allows the player to feel as though they are fully inhabiting the protagonist, while third-person perspectives make the player an external observer. This line is even invoked within In-Game, albeit from one of Calleja’s research participants rather than Calleja himself. I disagree with this argument for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the first-person perspective limits the perception of the protagonist as a congruous part of the game’s world. In third-person, the player can see how they interact with the environment with their whole body. In first-person, the player character is often no more than a floating pair of hands. Sometimes they will have a lower body, but with minimal involvement. Conversely, this does mean the need for nuanced animations won’t impede otherwise immersive design. In Deus Ex, a great many objects in the environment can be picked up and moved by the player. In doing so, the objects just float in front of the camera with a transparency effect applied to avoid obstructing the player’s vision. This is not very immersive, but much easier to animate than having the player character’s hands realistically grasp and manipulate the objects. In third-person, suspending one’s disbelief to think the player character is holding the floating object would be even more of a stretch, making such realistic animations a near-necessity. The first-person perspective therefore seems to be used for immersion out of convenience more than out of being better suited for the purpose.

The other problem with assuming first-person perspective is inherently immersive is that is assumes the player should feel as though the player character is a representation of the self. Certainly in some games such as The Elder Scrolls, in which the character’s appearance and parameters are set by the player and there is little backstory for them to speak of, this could be the case, but as described above, it’s unclear if the first-person perspective would actually enhance the experience of immersion. Regardless, an anonymous protagonist the player can project onto is not conducive to immersion. The player must perceive a relation between the character and the world they inhabit, and the more a character is fleshed it, the more they can be a part of that world. Efforts to anonymize the protagonist to enhance immersion often backfire. In the aforementioned Deus Ex, the game is mostly played in first-person, but the camera switches to first-person during dialogue to show the interaction between protagonist JC Denton and other characters. Dishonored, in many ways a spiritual successor to Deus Ex, is presented entirely in first-person with the protagonist Corvo Attano being silent. Scenes of dialogue feature other characters speaking to Corvo and around Corvo, but Corvo has almost no involvement in these conversations. Both the player and the player character are disconnected from the events on-screen.

Too Many Cooks

My largest criticism of In-Game is Calleja’s emphasis on multiplayer games, with World of Warcraft and Planetside being the two most frequently discussed. I take issue with this not just because it’s a very limited perspective on video games, but also because, to my eyes, multiplayer design is often antithetical to immersion. There are a lot of reasons for this, but the most general explanation I can give is that the relationship between the game as designed by the developers and the game as experience by the player is greatly complicated by the presence of other players with their own experience and the ability to shape the experience of others. Control over the experience has been wrested from both of the principle parties.

First, let us look at the overlap between the spatial and social dimensions. Agents in the game, be they human players or non-player characters, are social beings as well as a part of the environment. Developers carefully craft these environments and add characters to populate them in a way that is congruous with the environment. The player alone already has the ability to break this congruity, such as by equipping an absurd outfit or by behaving erratically, but as described above, a player keen on immersion probably won’t be interested in doing that. Adding other players to the mix is an interference with this dynamic. In Dark Souls, the enemies that populate the various locales all feel like natural parts of the game’s world broadly and the individual locations more specifically. The online component allows other players to appear as invaders, and there is no such expectation of congruity here. The solemn halls of Anor Londo may be breached by a shirtless, pantsless, flame-throwing man, and the prompt on-screen that the player has been invaded by dark spirit SublimeFan69 does not make things much better. In another example, contrast the behavior of NPCs with human players in an urban environment. In any given video game set in a city, there will be lots of parts of the city that are not there for the player’s interaction but merely to make the city feel more like a real place. That’s because the city is nominally populated by a bunch of regular people who are not the hero of the story and are more concerned with going to work and shopping than they are with accepting quests from the guild and upgrading their armor at the blacksmith. These regular people are the NPCs that move through the city at a realistic pace and gather at meeting places or in markets that the player has no immediate need for. In an online game, the city is now filled with a bunch of other human players who do not behave as the NPCs do. Consider the difference in experience between Final Fantasy XIV, an online game, and Final Fantasy XV, an offline game. In Final Fantasy XV, walking through the streets of Lestallum makes protagonist Noctis appear as a part of an interactive world, bumping and weaving his way through crowds of people going about their daily lives. In Final Fantasy XIV, so many of the characters populating the cities are other human players, and for the sake of a smooth experience for all, they’re unrestricted by the presence of others, overlapping with and passing through other players at will. Beyond the points of interest for players, the rest of the city just seems like window dressing.

Another issue is the challenge of incorporating narrative into the multiplayer environment. Certainly they don’t pose a challenge to emergent narratives experienced by players individually or collectively, but they do impede written narrative. The glut of hero shooters in recent years is demonstrative of this problem. In this genre, teams are made up of characters with defined appearances, abilities, and stories. One team might be made up of characters that, within the game’s universe, are on opposing sides, while the other team that they are presently fighting against might feature characters that belong to the same faction. These two ideologically incoherent teams then battle for control of land and resources, for the benefit of… someone, I suppose. Fighting games with one-on-one combat mostly sidestep this issue. Dialogue between fighters can give context to the battle, making the difference between a friendly spar and a battle between mortal enemies. While this mitigates the problem, it does not change the fact that multiplayer matches across genres almost always take place in a vacuum with no relation to events before or after.

Calleja describes shared experiences as amplifying affective involvement. Specifically, he describes how playing a game like Left 4 Dead with others present either in-person or online with voice chat enabled enhances the feelings of fear and tension. When a teammate is attacked by a creature, you won’t just hear the character’s prerecorded lines of distress, you’ll hear the real-life player’s more dynamic response. This is perhaps true in theory, and likely true in practice some of the time, but much of the time it does not hold. One only needs to watch some videos of Left 4 Dead multiplayer to see how farcical it can become. It’s been observed many times that fear is perceived less strongly in groups, and one can only imagine how the experience of a game like Silent Hill 2 would be lessened by co-operative multiplayer.

Shared ludic objectives often come at the expense of spatial involvement. It’s easy to stop and take in the surroundings when playing alone, but with a team who expect a certain level of performance, you aren’t given that opportunity. The environment will cease to be a meaningful place and will instead become nothing more than a venue for the action.

A Tale of Two Immersions

As described above, Calleja distinguishes between immersion as absorption and immersion as transportation, saying that they are different concepts and the conflation of the two is responsible for the verbal disagreement in immersion discourses (that is, arguments cease to become a difference of positions on one matter and instead become a difference in what the matter actually is). While this distinction is important and useful, I believe there necessarily is some sort of relation between the two. The challenge is identifying what that relationship is. It’s simple enough to assume that one can reinforce the other. People are more likely to develop an interest in a game’s virtual world if they enjoy playing the game at length, and the virtual world can act as the hook to pull them into the absorbing experience. These examples are facile, of course, and the reality is often the inverse.

Consider some of the examples described above. If there’s a recurring theme in the comparison I’ve made, it’s that games that are more immersive tend to have a degree of reservation, having substantial breaks in their action, deliberately slower gameplay, or constraints on the scale or scope of the game, whereas games tending towards the less immersive side of the spectrum have much less limitation in content and near constant stimulus. Once can see how the latter lends itself to immersion as absorption: the general illustration of losing track of time while playing a game is much easier to fathom in a game with either near-endless things to do or the ability to repeat the game experience ad nauseum. While the two forms of immersion are not fully mutually exclusive, each corresponds more strongly to a different kind of game.

Conclusion

The ideas presented up to this point are admittedly scattershot and roughly expressed. I am not an academic, nor do I have intimate familiarity with the academic literature, but I do stand by my arguments individually and believe they form a cohesive whole.

While I identify some design choices that are more or less suited to an immersive experience (camera perspective, number of players, etc), I also identify others as not following this binary (linearity, freedom, etc). There is no checklist that can be completed to classify a game as immersive or not. While this may be unsatisfying, it’s also the truth. Games are holistic experiences. Just as we can recognize that there are different disciplines like design, programming, and graphics that make up a game, or just as Calleja’s model is made up of various dimensions of engagement, we must also recognize games as holistic experiences. We experience the game in totality, and immersion depends on understanding this. Whether a game is linear or open, realistic or stylized, fast or slow, is independent of immersion on its own. A consistency between the expressions of these facets is necessary to create immersion. As games are interactive media, input from the player is important, but it’s a two-way street, and conscious decisions from players depend on conscious decisions from developers.