Immersion Revisited

Still confused about the term "Immersion"?
- I know I am.

Here are three types of immersion as defined by Ernest Adams:

Tactical Immersion - "Tactical immersion is immersion in the moment-by-moment act of playing the game, and is typically found in fast action games. It's what people call being "in the zone" or "in the groove." It's physical and immediate. When you're tactically immersed in a game, your higher brain functions are largely shut down and you become a pair of eyes directly communicating with your fingers. It's an almost meditation-like state-the Tetris Trance... To create tactical immersion, you must offer your players a flawless user interface, one that responds rapidly, intuitively, and above all reliably."

Strategic Immersion - "Strategic immersion, on the other hand, is a cerebral kind of involvement with the game. It's about seeking a path to victory, or at least to optimize a situation. The highest, most abstract form of strategic immersion is experienced by chess masters, who concentrate on finding the right move among a vast number of possibilities. When you're strategically immersed, you're observing, calculating, deducing. However, this doesn't have to mean that the game is turn-based, nor does it even have to be about conflict. The player who intently studies patterns of traffic in Sim City in order to decide where to build a new road is strategically immersed in the game."

Narrative Immersion - "Narrative immersion in games is much the same as it is in books or movies. A player gets immersed in a narrative when he or she starts to care about the characters and wants to know how the story is going to end. The player who is immersed in the narrative can tolerate a certain amount of bad strategic and tactical gameplay. Few games have stories good enough to excuse really bad play, but people who are hooked and want to know how it ends will usually overlook, say, a slightly awkward interface or a feeble AI."

I think what Adams call Tactical, Strategic and Narrative immersion is more akin to what we would call Engrossment. I would argue that immersion is more than just being totally focused on a task. I am more in favor of Murrays definition of immersion in that it has to do with being "transported" into another world - something that I don't think Guitar Hero or Tetris really does, even though they are totally demanding of your attention.

I don't see that any of Adams cathegories touch on the feeling of awe and wonder that you feel just navigating through the exquisitly crafted worlds of GTA4 or Fallout3, or even the feeling of making a death defying jump in Mirror's Edge.