Immersion in Digital Games: Review of Gaming Experience Research

This chapter focuses on the idea of immersion in games as it has consistently proved itself to be an important component of the experience players seek from games. It reviews the work on gaming experience with the aim of dissociating spatial presence from immersion to show how the two may vary independently of each other. Immersion can be characterized as the degree of involvement that players have with different aspects of the game leading to a move of the attention, awareness, and thoughts of the player from the real world around them to the events happening within the game. The chapter groups the descriptions of gaming experience into three sections: generic positive experiences that are not particular to the experience of playing digital games, broader descriptions of gaming experiences, and gaming experiences specifically related to immersion, engagement, and involvement.