Immersion in Virtual Worlds - The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality

This paper seeks to clarify the role of the image in video game representation. I argue that virtuality is incompatible with depictive representation, and that the distinction between virtual environments and interactive depiction is important in game theory and analysis. In the first part I combine a critical modification of Kendall Walton’s concept of reflexive representation with Edmund Husserl’s concept of image consciousness, in order to clarify the ontological difference between physical models and depictive images. In the second part, I discuss the relationship between physical models and virtual things, and the difference between photographic depiction and screen-mediated prosthetic vision. Finally, I show how this theoretical framework can help clarify the nature of interactive depiction in games. Keywords: representation, depiction, simulation, virtuality, Husserl, Walton

2013

Narrative game designer, or simply narrative designer, is a role in contemporary computer game development. The narrative designer is responsible for designing the player’s experience of a game’s fictional world. This study delves into the practice of narrative design from the perspective of embodied presence. In comparison with books, movies and other media, the medium of computer games excels in offering the media user the feeling of being a physically present participant in the fictional world. When exploiting the merits of embodied presence, narrative designers are challenged to express fictional worlds without disrupting this feeling of “being-there”. Close-ups, flashbacks, ellipses and other narrative devices–common to other audio-visual media–cannot be employed to the same extent. This study reconceptualises and apposes the notions of presence and narrative by critically expanding on Presence Theory, phenomenological media theory and narratology. Drawing from insights and practices in game, film, performance, architecture and literature studies, the study subsequently proposes alternative narrative devices, more compatible with the interactive and spatial nature of computer games, enabling designers to express fictional worlds while maintaining the player’s feeling of embodied presence.

In this paper I want to discuss the nature of participatory real-time graphical environments, which is the general form that makes a broad range of action game genres possible, from SpaceWar! (1962) to contemporary 3D action-adventures, including the FPS genre. Real-time graphics is also of course established outside videogames, found in anything from creativity software to fully immersive VR applications, but is nevertheless, I would argue, associated primarily with videogames and videogame culture. In public discourse as well as in academia, the general category of "videogames" is even sometimes used -however incorrectsynonymously with "games with real-time graphics". I will suggest that real-time graphical environments, when engaged with in the habituated and intuitive manner demanded by games, is best understood as a simulation of a physical world, which is aptly accounted for by the notion of the virtual. Responding to John Richard Sageng's (2012) suggestion that this notion is an empty in-between category and a philosophical dead end (an escape route for a phenomenon that seems to fit uneasily between the real and the fictional), I will suggest a positive definition of virtuality, and argue that it should be conceptualised as an ontologically irreducible category.

In: Amyris Fernandez/Olli Leino/Hanna Wirman (Hg.): Extending Experiences. Structure, Analysis and Design of Computer Game Player Experience. Rovaniemi: Lapland University Press 2008. S. 29-43. , 2008

Philosophy & Technology, 2014

This paper discusses the nature and limits of player embodiment within digital games. We identify a convergence between everyday bodily actions and activity within digital environments, and a trend towards incorporating natural forms of movement into gaming worlds through mimetic control devices. We examine recent literature in the area of immersion and presence in digital gaming; Calleja’s (2011) recent Player Involvement Model (PIM) of gaming is discussed and found to rely on a problematic notion of embodiment as ‘incorporation’. We go on to further reflect on the nature of player involvement in digital gaming environments by applying insights from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. It is argued that digital embodiment differs so significantly from primordial embodiment that any idea of total immersion is simply fantasy. We subsequently argue that digital game media nonetheless provide us with unique opportunities for exploring the nature of distinctively human forms of embodiment, and so we need more complete and more reliable phenomenological descriptions of the experiences associated with computer games.

2009

This research has previously used the term 'embodied narrative' [7] to explore the imaginary in virtual worlds. Using narrative as a method, it explores and decodes the complex layering of conflict between the real and the virtual. Second Life is a performative space par excellence. Hayles [10: 39] explains that when the pov (Hayles' terminology) is 'metaphorized into an interactive space, the datascape is narrativized by the pov's movement through it'. The performativity of interaction in this shared space moves across geographical space though the temporal dimension remains. This paper explores embodiment and performativity as a strategy to understand the impact of new technologies on our real and virtual bodies, and on the imaginations that breathe life into the post-human.

Self-published on Academia.edu, 2025

A game’s power lies in its ability to transcend the player beyond the screen into a game world where their actions and decisions feel genuinely engaging, resulting in the player feeling immersed in the world. Immersion makes gaming a unique medium that defies passive entertainment as it is multifaceted, providing each player with varied experiences and personalised engagement. This essay explores four distinct forms of immersion: perceptual immersion, immersion as transportation, narrative-based immersion, and challenge-based immersion to analyse how they shape player engagement across different game genres. By understanding these immersive mechanics, I will highlight how games not only captivate players but also influence creative design choices, ultimately signifying the responsibility of my desired role as a 3D artist in the gaming industry.

This paper argues that gaming is an embodied phenomenon which is distributed across multiple conceptual domains. Videogames are, as Gee notes, "'action-and-goal-directed preparations for, and simulations of, embodied experience'" (23). However, gaming is more than just what happens on screen. It is a highly mediated experience (the screen sits between that player and the game) in which the player straddles two worlds. They simultaneously exist in the 'virtual' world as their character on the screen as well as in the 'real' world as they press buttons and manipulate the interface of the game. Indeed, Juul argues that playing a game is a "dual structure" in which "the actions we perform have the duality of being real events and being assigned another meaning within the fictional world" (141). Thus, when I click the mouse, I perform a real world action (moving my finger to press the button) as well as a symbolic action in-game (moving a character or selecting an item). Whereas Gee was primarily interested in what happens between the player's head (mind) and the screen, I intend to examine embodiment across this dual structure of physical/virtual experience-that is, not just in the game but in the game play.

2020