Immersion

“Immersion” is one of the most widely used concepts in video game literature. As the main effect pursued by both game designers and players, it has attracted some dedicated academic attention in order to better understand its psychological implications. It is broad enough to accommodate many different practices in a variety of media, and scholars who have dedicated efforts on the topic have often adopted a transmedial framework. This might be the main benefit of such a concept: compared to more restrictive approaches that led to infamous debates, a theory of immersion can accommodate a variety of cultural phenomena and feeds on established propositions in media studies, psychology, as much as the latest discoveries in neuroscience. In this short chapter, we introduce some of the most preeminent theories of immersion and highlight the benefits of these theories to embrace the complexity of the video game experience.