Defining and Measuring Player Immersion
In the video game industry, the word “immersion” is constantly tossed around when describing how “realistic”, or “engaging” a game is. It’s easy to tell when you become “immersed” in a video game, as “the hours fly by” and suddenly your decision to “only play an hour” can quickly turn into several hours. Despite players “knowing” when they are immersed in a game, there is little clarity on exactly how players become immersed in a video game. In this article, I will be presenting a condensed version of my master’s thesis literature review where I explored this topic and developed a set of 8 characteristics in games that lead to player immersion. If you would like to view the full master's thesis version, click here . What is Immersion? There are numerous terms and concepts related to immersion like flow, spatial presence, cognitive absorption, cognitive engagement just to name a few. However, for the sake of brevity, I will not be describing what each of these