Alison McMahon, "Immersion, Engagement and Presence: A Method for Analyzing 3-D Games"

(In The Video Game Theory Reader)

- Shift towards 3D and first-person perspective as the dominant in popular games situates them closer to Virtual Reality (VR) theory and practice
- McMahon will critique the notion of immersion (it's too vague, break it down into specific terms and recast)
- "Immersion" can refer both to diegetic/narrative immersion and nondiegetic/game immersion (in the rules, strategy, etc.) - these are two different things subsumed under the same term
- Related concept of presence, the feeling of "being there" is used interchangeably with immersion
- Realism is not necessary for immersion/engagement/presence
- Conditions for immersion in VR - meets user expectations; allows non-trivial interaction; consistency
- Good quote: "devising a winning (or at least spectacular) strategy" - not all gameplay is geared entirely towards success (expansive gameplay, role-playing etc.)
- Immersion is generally associated with narrative and fiction
- Engagement is generally associated with gamplay, "deep play"
- (It could be argued that these are flip sides of the same coin.)
- Presence (sometimes) involves embodiment
- McMahon wants to judge games according to the degree of immersion, engagement and presence (assuming, therefore, that these are aesthetic ideals for most/all games)
- Mark J. P. Wolf suggests that 3D first-person games follows the conventions of Classical Hollywood Cinema, but this is not at all the case - Classical Hollywood Cinema involves purposive cutting, framing, mise-en-scene, none of which are present in the same sense in 3D first-person games Rather, these games seek to produce the same effects (invisibility, continuity, contiguity of space, etc.) through very different means!
- The first-person shooter "gun-hand" convention is not traditionally relevant to gameplay (serves instead to draw the player in), but more recently the option of aiming down the ironsights of a 3D-rendered gun has changed this
- 3D first-person shooters are often understood to have pioneered immersion, engagement and presence (and are even cited/used/preferred by VR and AI engineers and technicians)
- Presence is the experience of a mediated environment as unmediated
- Elements and factors that contribute to a sense of presence include social interaction, realism, "transportation," immersion, actors and intelligent environments
- Quality of social interaction, the feeling of being "with" other players (communication, interaction, collaboration, togetherness)
- A player might view his or her avatar as "me" or as a character in the world
- Social realism vs perceptual (audiovisual) realism
- (Social realism is not the right term here - McMahon is not just talking about how characters and people act believably in the game, but how the environment as a whole functions in a believable manner - systemic realism? Environmental realism? There's got to be a better way to say that.)
- Presence in a space is constructed via "perceptual opportunities" both designed and emergent
- "Transportation" and telepresence - is the user transported to a place? Is the place transported to the user? Do multiple users share a common place?
- How does teleportation/quick travel affect the sense of presence (as opposed to contiguous navigation/transportation)?
- Perceptual vs psychological immersion (blocking out external stimuli (VR helmet) vs mental absorption)
- Interaction with the mediated environment is important for presence
- Synthetic social actors that act meaningfully within an environment (ie: bots, AI, NPCs) can create a sense of presence (as opposed to "canned" characters that to not seem to act)
- Users tend to respond realistically to synthetic social actors
- An "intelligent environment" - the machine seems to be human or to have personality (beyond simply acting meaningfully)?
- McMahon argues that immersion and engagement are in fact both aspects of the larger concept of presence, the sense of which can be created by many diverse elements and varies greatly
- Presence results from an interaction between form/content/system and the individual player
- This conception of presence can be used to study 3D games both quantitatively/analytically or qualitatively/aesthetically (McMahon doesn't really give an example of the former or explain how such a study might work)
- Surely this isn't limited to 3D games? At least some 2D and text-based games must deal in presence (albeit in a different manner)
- McMahon's example is a brief study of Myst III: Exile
- Non-interactive conversations reduce presence; high social/perceptual realism; environmental intelligence is recognizable in the puzzles (a sort of "personality" that demonstrates intelligent design); teleportation is integrated into the fiction; low perceptual immersion but high psychological immersion; many "attractors" and secrets/surprises that draw the player into the game and onwards
- Contrast to Diablo II, which cultivates a completely different kind of presence made up of other elements
- This isn't so much a method as a theoretical approach or framework - a perspective for the analysis of 3D games that could be integrated into any number of methods