games and immersion

mike's post on active participation in board games has me thinking about what software designers and game designers call immersion. it amounts to roughly the level of engagement (i.e. active participation) a player has with a game. from the figure below, you can see how white and i mapped Ermi and Mäyrä's (2005) dimensions of immersion in games:

but player immersion really difficult to measure, because it seems to be fairly subjective and player-dependent. i wonder if we would run into the same problems trying to measure active participation in board games. it would be interesting, at least to see how the kids characterize their game play and level of engagement with different games.

for more on immersion, you can check out some writing i've done on it here:

"Enter the game factor"

or here:

"Multiple perspectives on player immersion"

this last link includes some embedded video from the television show South Park, and while it's not exceptionally vulgar (as the show can be), i would want to warn parents to watch the clip before sharing it with their kids. it is very funny and raises some interesting questions about how and why kids become immersed in their favorite games. . . .