Immersion and MMORPGs

In light of the recent 'Many Faces of Immersion' post here, and thanks to a little nudge from Andrew, I decided to dust off and finish up an article on Immersion in MMORPGs that I originally worked on back while I was playing WoW. As the above post and related discussion highlighted, just defining the term 'Immersion' as it applies to video games and game design is a challenge. We all have something a little different in mind when we talk about 'Immersion'. Some people use it primarily to talk about video game graphics, while others take a much broader view of the term.

In my opinion - and the opinion is shared by a number of game designers and authors on the topic - 'Immersion' in video games refers to a specific occurrence: the experience of being 'caught up' in the video game environment. I'm sure it's happened to all of us. You look up at the clock after a gaming session, only to discover that far more time had gone by than you had really planned on, or you were so intent on playing the game that you entirely forgot about eating lunch, or you originally started an MMO to play casually with a few friends, only to discover two years later that you'd accumulated over 200 days played in addition to now spending most of your awake hours thinking about the game. *cough*

It should probably come as no surprise to anyone here that MMOs are typically highly-immersive. In fact, in a survey of players of MMOs, a full 60% of players admitted to having at least once played for 10 hours continuously.

One of the main reasons MMO gameplay is so immersive is that it typically takes advantage of all four commonly-discussed forms of immersion:

Spatial/Sensory Immersion
In discussions of Immersion and 3D games, this is usually the first aspect people think about: how 'real' or photo-realistic the game graphics are. Spatial/Sensory Immersion is the experience of being in a game environment that is “perceptually convincing”.

As the discussion on the 'Many Faces of Immersion' post covered Spatial/Sensory Immersion quite in-depth already, I'll just add one of the key goals behind Spatial/Sensory Immersion is to give the player the sense of being in a 'other' space: a space separate from our everyday reality, but with a clearly-defined set of rules, parameters, boundaries, etc. In short, the 'other' space behaves in predictable and learnable ways. Thus, Spatial/Sensory Immersion is really more about establishing context, consistency, and permanency for the 'other' space than about visually awing the player.

Tactical/Sensory-Motoric Immersion
If you’ve ever felt like shouting “I shall pwn you with my button pressing skillz!!”, or gotten so involved in hammering your attack sequence you forgot to look up in time to get out of a shadow fissure, you know the experience of Tactical/Sensory-Motoric Immersion (Note: if it’s the first one, you don’t have to admit it).

This form of Immersion is present in games requiring fast reactions, precise hand-eye coordination, and technical perfection, and it isn't limited to video games, either. In physical sports and activities, Tactical/Sensory-Motoric Immersion is the often described as the feeling of being in “the zone”, of playing beyond your everyday ability level without much conscious thought.

Strategic/Cognitive Immersion
Typically associated with a “mental challenge”, this form of Immersion is most commonly talked about with games like Chess. The player gets immersed in the process of mentally calculating out all the different possible moves, responses, strategies, tactics, etc.

Interestingly, Strategic/Cognitive Immersion can be long-lasting, and has the potential to occupy the attention of the player even outside of the game itself. Take Chess, for example. For those interested in Chess, a lot of their time spent on the game takes place outside of the game itself, studying openings or famous games, or analyzing patterns like the one below:


Narrative/Emotional Immersion
I already described this one more in-depth in a recent post here, so I'll keep it brief. Narrative/Emotional Immersion can be exemplified as the experience of not wanting to put the book down, the desire to keep reading to find out what happens next, the emotions you feel when things happen to the characters you’re reading about.

Without delving too much into theories about humans as social/emotional creatures, I think all of us can recall times we've been emotionally affected while watching or reading a narrative unfold, and often these feelings can persist even after finishing the book, movie, or game.

Did I just make these terms up?
No, the four types of immersion defined above were coined by Ernest Adams, Staffan Björk, and other notable experts on video game design. I do believe there is, however, one type of Immersion that these experts have missed:

Character/Role Immersion
This form of Immersion is about the unique interaction between player and character, when your own goals, desires, and motivations get caught up in your goals, desires, and motivations for your character. I suspect that most MMO players can tell stories about all of the tedious, boring, or outright mind-numbing game activities they've engaged in to get their character that title, pet, or mount they want them to have. I felt that the experience of Character/Role Immersion was captured perfectly in the following comic: