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Measuring and Defining the

Experience of Immersion in Games

Charlene Jennetta, Anna L. Coxa, Paul Cairnsb, Samira Dhopareec, Andrew Eppsc, Tim Tijsd and

Alison Waltond2008

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ABSTRACT

This paper explores immersion further by investigating whether immersion can be defined quantitatively, describing 3 experiments. It investigates:

1. participants’ abilities to switch from an immersion to non-immersive task.

2. whether there were changes in eyes movement during an immersion task.

3. The effect of an externally imposed pace of interaction on immersion and affective measures.

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Introduction

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Conceptual Background of Immersion

Computer games are enjoyed by millions of people around the world.

Games have a ability to draw people in. And People focus immensely to the game.

So this experience is referred to an “immersion.”

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Conceptual Background of Immersion (2) There are three distinct levels of

immersion:1. Engagement2. Engrossment3. Total immersion

“A Zen-like state where your hands just seem to know what to do, and your mind just seems to carry on with the story.” (Brow & Cairns 2004)

“When you stop thinking about the fact you’re playing a computer game and you’re just in a computer.” (Brow & Cairns)

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Conceptual Background of Immersion (3)

The broad findings indicate that immersion has: Lack of awareness of time Loss of awareness of the real world Involvement and a sense of being in

the task environment

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Immersion and Engaging Experiences

The three ideas to describe engagement experiences: Flow Cognitive Absorption Presence

The paper argue that immersion is clearly distinct from these concepts, and immersion is a key to understand the relationship between people and videogames.

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Flow (1)

Flow is the state in which individuals are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter (Csikszentmihalyi 1990).

Csikszentmihalyi 1975 “When the game is exciting, I don’t seem to hear anything. The world seems to be cut off from me and all there is to think about is my game.”

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Flow (2)

Csikszentmihalyi presents 8 components of flow:

1. Clear goals2. High degree of concentration3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness4. Distorted sense of time5. Direct and immersion feedback6. Balance between ability level and challenge7. Sense of personal control8. Intrinsically rewarding.

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Flow (3)

Flow overlaps with immersion in the sense of distorting time and providing challenge that involves a person in a task.

However, flow is more extreme than immersion. E.g. A player is immersed in a videogame but still is aware of time to catch a bus or go to a lecture.

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Flow (4)

GameFlow is a better positioning flow as part of gaming experience (Sweetser and Wyeth 2000):

1. Concentration2. Challenge3. Skills4. control5. clear goals6. Feedback7. Immersion8. and social interaction

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Cognitive Absorption (1)

(Agarwal and Karahana 2000) CA is a state of deep involvement with software.

1. Temporal dissociation2. Attention focus3. Heightened Enjoyment4. Control5. Curiosity

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Cognitive Absorption (2)

A clear distinction between CA and immersion: CA is an attitude towards information technology in general whereas immersion is the actual experience of a particular occasion of playing a videogame.

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Presence (1)

Presence has been popular for virtual reality technologies. However, the term is still under debate.

(1994 Slater et al.) Presence is a psychological sense of being in a virtual environment. Factors to underlie presence: control, sensory, distraction, & realism.

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Presence (2)

Zahorik and Jenison (1998) claim that when the environment responds to the user’s action in a way which is perceived as lawful, presence is more likely to occur.

Therefore, they argue that presence is measured by the coupling between perception and action and the degree of lawfulness between virtual environment and the real world.

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Presence (3)

The paper argues that presence is only a small part of gaming experience: whereas presence is often viewed as a state of mind, (the paper argues that) immersion is an experience of time.

The paper also argues that presence is also possible without immersion.

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Immersion: the psychology of sub-optimal experience (1)

Immersion has links to the notion of flow and CA and all three use things like temporal dissociation and awareness of surrounding as indicators of high engagement.

However, immersion is concerned with the specific, psychological experience of engaging with a computer game.

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Immersion: the psychology of sub-optimal experience (2)

The goal of the paper is to be able to measure immersion. Then the long term aim will be to understand what influences immersion and therefore how to develop better games.

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RESEARCH QUESTIONS (1)

One aim of this paper is to consider player’s subjective experiences of immersion, and develop an immersion questionnaire combining aspects of flow, CA and presence.

The questionnaire: Rate: 1-10 Multiple question.

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RESEARCH QUESTIONS (2)

There are three experiments:1. If a person becomes present in some

alternative game world then there may be some measurable effect on their “return” to the real world.

2. A person becomes more immersed in a game they might show a measurable change in their eye movements. (224 samples)

3. Investigate the variable of speed that altering one component of a task will alter the immerse experience.

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QUESTIONNAIRE DEVELOPMENT

The questionnaire is developed from finding of previous studies into the related area of flow, CA and presence.

Other questions were derived from Brown and Cairns (2004).

16 pairs of questions using negative and positive wording (32 questions).

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EXPERIMENT 1 (1)

Background of ExperimentThe goal of Ex 1 is to relate the

experience of immersion to the more objective measure of time taken to complete a task in another action space.

That is, if a person is highly immerse in a game, one might predict that it would be more difficult for them to switch from the game space to the task space.

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EXPERIMENT 1 (2)

The ResultsThe experimental mean was

higher than control mean: 69.6 and 52.5.

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EXPERIMENT 1 (3)

1. The hypothesis, that the level of immersion in playing the game will be higher than the level of immersion in the control activity, was supported.

2. The hypothesis, that the improvement in task performance (as measured by task completing time) will be less in the experimental condition than in the control condition, was also supported.

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EXPERIMENT 2 (1)

Three Hypotheses: 1. The level of immersion in playing in the

immersion condition will be higher than the level of immersion in the non-immersion condition.

2. Participants in the immersive condition will show a different change in eye movement (i.e. number of fixations) over the time than participants in the non-immersive condition.

3. Subjective self-reported immersion ratings will correlate with these changes in eye movements.

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EXPERIMENT 2 (2)1. The hypothesis, that the level of immersion in playi

ng in the immersion condition will be higher than the level of immersion in the non-immersion condition, was supported.

2. The hypothesis, that participants in the immersive condition will show a different change in eye movement (i.e. number of fixations) over the time than participants in the non-immersive condition , was supported.

3. The hypothesis, that subjective self-reported immersion ratings will correlate with these changes in eye movements, was somewhat supported.

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EXPERIMENT 3

Three hypotheses:1. Participants in the four speed conditions wo

uld vary in terms of the amount of immersion they experienced.

2. Participants in the four pace conditions would vary in terms of the amount of state-anxiety they experienced.

3. Participant in the four speed conditions would differ in levels of other affective states.

All the three hypotheses were supported.

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GENERAL DISCUSSION (1)Summary of Findings Immersion is important to gaming, transcending exist

ing cognitive theories of flow, CA and presence. Immersion is an experience in one moment in time a

nd graded (engagement, engrossment, total immersion).

Immersion involves a lack of awareness of time, a loss of awareness of the real world, involvement and a sense of being in the task environment.

Most importantly, immersion is the result of a good gaming experience.

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GENERAL DISCUSSION (2)

Experience showed that immersion can be measured subjectively (questionnaire) and objectively (i.e. task completion time, eye movement).

And immersion is not only viewed as a positive experience but negative emotion and uneasiness also run high.

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Thank for your attention

Presented by

Oum SaokosalGraduate Student

Jeonju University