What Are The Elements of Immersion?

What does it mean to have an immersive gameplay experience? For me, I thought this meant playing a game for hours with little to no breaks. An experience in which all my attention was devoted to the game. Although I felt somewhat satisfied with my answer, I am still left wondering how I am able to immerse in gameplay. I want to know what the implications, ingredients or constituents are to allow an individual to immerse in gaming. So after watching the movie Run Lola Run, and others playing Frogger and Cat Simulator 3000 I observed how each of these mediums have two common components that create an immersive experience: time and fear of failing. After making this observation I thought maybe these components may help me discover the secrets to immersive gameplay.

First, let me define what I mean by time and fear of failing. Time is a predetermined length of time to complete a specific task or goal and acts as a stressor. For example, in Cat Simulator 3000 one has only 3 minutes to make a mess of the home the cat resides in. As for fear of failing, this can be defined as an individual’s anxiety to not complete a given task and face an undesired outcome. For instance, in Frogger one must get all their frogs to other side in a timely manner and failure to do so means they must start over. These two elements work together in order to immerse the player.

So since we have defined the two observed components of immersion let’s examine how Run Lola Run, Frogger, and Cat Simulator 3000 make use of them. Lola, the main character from Run Lola Run, wants to get 100,000 deutsche marks to her boyfriend and only has 20 minutes to do it. She pushes pass pedestrians, causes car crashes, and even threatens to shoot anyone who gets in her way. Clearly, Lola is having an immersive experience and I think the component of time plays a key role in this. Time is of the essence because she only has twenty minutes and it becomes a stressor because she must organize it to fulfill her goals. Simultaneously with time is the fear of failing which in this case will result in the death of her boyfriend Manni. When both time and fear of failing are at work together Lola has the incentive to immerse and give all her attention to her task. Evidently, Lola has an immersive experience by completing her goal despite all odds against her. It is important to note that Run Lola Run is a film but, the two immersive components prevalent in this film occur the same way in gaming.

We now move to gameplay in which the two immersive components are also found. In Frogger (figure 1) the element of time takes form in the 30 seconds a player has to get all their frogs to the other side and advance to the next level. The fear of failing in this case is starting over even if you completed four or more levels. The two components lead players to immerse in their gameplay experience because both time and fear of failing gives incentive to stay solely focused on the given task. The same can be said for Cat Simulator 3000 because the player desires to complete enough tasks before the cat owner comes home. The time and the fear of failing are working simultaneously and players are compelled to immerse in their gameplay experience. I believe if the components of time and fear of failing did not exist players will most likely not have a strong immersive gameplay experience.

Figure 1 the player must quickly get frogger to the other side before time runs out.

Nonetheless, I do not think only time and fear of failing are the only components to make up an immersive experience. This observation is a tentative answer or guess as to how gamers cultivate immersive play/engagement. If we consider games like Zelda Twilight Princess we realize that these two components work differently in this game. In every moment of the game one is not obligated to carry out a task in a specific span of time. In addition, the fear of failing in those tasks do not always have high stakes (a dying character, starting over, etc…). Nonetheless, players have an immersive experience in games like Zelda Twilight Princess. Thus, more investigation would need to be done to figure out the inner workings of immersive gameplay.