Excerpts from the book "Hamlet on the Holodeck"

Here are some nice excerpts from Janet Murray's book "Hamlet on the Holodeck- The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace".

On Immersion:
"The experience of being transported to an elaborately simulated place is pleasurable in itself, regardless of the fantasy content. We refer to this experience as immersion. Immersion is a metaphorical term derived from the physical experience of being submerged in water. We seek the same feeling from a psychologically immersive experience that we do from a plunge in the ocean or swiming pool: the sensation of being surrounded by a compleatly other reality, as different as water is from air, that takes over all of our attention, our whole perceptual apparatus. We enjoy the moment out of our familiar world, the feeling of alertness that comes form being in a new place, and the deligt that comes from learning to move within it.... In a participatory medium, immersion implies learning to swim, to do things that the new environment makes possible." p.98-99

On regulating arousal (Murray claims that immersion will colapse both if percived as too fake and from being percived to be too real):
"In order to sustain such powerfull immersive trances, then, we have to do something inherently paradoxical: we have to keep the virtual world "real" by keeping it "not there". We have to keep it balanced squarely on the enchanted threshold without letting it collapse on either side." p.100

On The plasure of navigation:
"On form of agency not dependent on game structure yet characteristic of digital environments is spatial navigation. The ability to move through virtual landscapes can be pleasurable in itslef, idependent of the content of the spaces.... Pleasures specific to intentional navigation [are]: orienting ourself by landmarks, mapping a space mentally to match our experience and admiering the juxtaposition and changes in perspective that derive from moving through an intricate environment." p .129

On puzzle solving:
"The most dramatically satisfying puzzles are those that encourage the interactor to apply real-world thinking into a virtual world. (In Murrays own examples this could be as simple as knowing that the fire-breath of a dragon would melt an ice wall in the dungeon game Zork)" p.139

Overall, the chapters on Aesthetics and Agency (from where these excerpts were collected) are a very interesting read!