Quote from: Peregrin;459235Maybe it's the morphine drip, but this is just fucking hilarious.

Why is it hilarious?

An explanation will be more helpful than a gnomic quip.

Quote from: Phillip;459234Based on what evidence is it false?

"I really enjoy this illusion, because..."
"No, you don't! It's just an illusion that you enjoy the illusion!"

Um, you seem to be laboring under a misapprehension. That's not the sense in which the term is being used.

Quote from: Salen & ZimmermanCommon within the discourse of the immersive fallacy is the idea that entertainment technology is inevitably leading to more and more powerful systems of simulation . . . to create experiences indistinguishable from the real world. . . . [But] immersion as a representational goal has gone through a number of stylistic cycles over the centuries. In the last several decades [according to one art historian] immersion has become less prominent and respected in fields like art and literature.

So the immersive fallacy, in S&Z's terms, is to ignore how play is in and of itself an expressive medium, with all that that implies. "A game player does become engrossed in the game, yes. But it is an engagement that occurs through play itself. As we know, play is a process of metacommunication, a double-consciousness in which the player is well aware of the artificiality of the play situation." In other words, once the player is really fooled by the illusion, it stops being a game.

Quote from: Phillip;459237Why is it hilarious?

An explanation will be more helpful than a gnomic quip.

I know where you're coming from, but it could've been phrased much better.  The way you phrased it, it's like saying one has to disprove God in order for him not to exist.  Sticky logical trap, is all.

Quote from: Bill White;459238So the immersive fallacy, in S&Z's terms, is to ignore how play is in and of itself an expressive medium, with all that that implies. "A game player does become engrossed in the game, yes. But it is an engagement that occurs through play itself. As we know, play is a process of metacommunication, a double-consciousness in which the player is well aware of the artificiality of the play situation." In other words, once the player is really fooled by the illusion, it stops being a game.

I think, and I could be wrong here, that S&Z and most of the posters here don't mean the same thing when they say immersion. It looks like they are talking about a hyper realistic simulation of reality, whereas here I see a lot of people who aren't into highly simulative mechanics but see immersion as a critical part of their enjoyment of the game. Simply being deeply into the game and feeling like you are there (just like when you watch a movie and forget you are in a theater).

In general I do think immersion is important. But I also think different people require different things in order to experience it. For me mechanics that are able to fade into the background easily so I don't have to stop and think about them or break to make deep calculations seem to be what works best. For other elements it really depends on the kind of game I want to play.

Mm, dunno.  S&Z use it in a way that is fairly consistent with what people here are describing.

Quote from: Peregrin;459242Mm, dunno.  S&Z use it in a way that is fairly consistent with what people here are describing.

I am not familiar with their book, so its entirely possible I am misunderstanding them (or that we just disagree on how people here define it). I guess where I see the connection break down is that S&Z seem to tie it directly to uber-realistic representation of reality. In gaming terms, when I think of that level of realistic detail, I think of games that are crunch heavy, with lots of sub-systems, etc. But I see a lot of folks here who talk about immersion but don't appear to link it to that. Again I could be wrong. Just my sense of things.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;459241I think, and I could be wrong here, that S&Z and most of the posters here don't mean the same thing when they say immersion. It looks like they are talking about a hyper realistic simulation of reality, whereas here I see a lot of people who aren't into highly simulative mechanics but see immersion as a critical part of their enjoyment of the game. Simply being deeply into the game and feeling like you are there (just like when you watch a movie and forget you are in a theater).

In general I do think immersion is important. But I also think different people require different things in order to experience it. For me mechanics that are able to fade into the background easily so I don't have to stop and think about them or break to make deep calculations seem to be what works best. For other elements it really depends on the kind of game I want to play."

I think this is exactly right. Some concept of immersive engagement seems central to play of all kinds. What S&Z call the "immersive fallacy" is the idea that striving for greater and greater verisimilitude of representation (and the experience of that representation) is what gets you there. As you suggest, that's not actually so. S&Z want to understand all game procedures as metaphors representing other (possibly more real) things; they see games as semiotic systems.

EDIT: Just to be clear, S&Z don't understand immersion as requiring hyperreal simulation; they are arguing against the position that does. They are more interested in what engages people in play. Where I think you are right, Brendan, is in the notion that the idea of immersion takes different forms and means different things to different people. The literature on immersion makes this quite clear.

Quote from: Bill White;459245I think this is exactly right. Some concept of immersive engagement seems central to play of all kinds. What S&Z call the "immersive fallacy" is the idea that striving for greater and greater verisimilitude of representation (and the experience of that representation) is what gets you there. As you suggest, that's not actually so. S&Z want to understand all game procedures as metaphors representing other (possibly more real) things; they see games as semiotic systems.

Just so I am on the right page here. Their concept of the immersive fallacy is not necessarily connected to their definition of immersion. In other words they understand immersion as I would (deep engagement), but it is the fallacy where they link that to simulating reality to a high level of detail?

Quote from: Bill White;459238Um, you seem to be laboring under a misapprehension. That's not the sense in which the term is being used.

That's a marvel of vagueness, Bill. You get a perfect score for avoiding clear reference to absolutely anything.

Do you mean that "fallacy" is being used to mean something other than a false, erroneous, misleading, deceptive, etc., belief or statement? What, then?

Are you referring to some other term being used in some other sense?

QuoteIn other words, once the player is really fooled by the illusion, it stops being a game.

So what? Does this mean we should trash the technological advances of 30+ years and go back to unfilled polygons rendered slowly because "it's just a fallacy" that there is any pleasure in a more convincing simulation?

"Oh, no, we don't really mean such an extreme. We just left out key words such as 'all' for the heck of it."

Well, then, where are your alleged extremists on the other side?

I am not seeing any profundity here.

Cole, I'm afraid I don't have time today to discuss your comments at length -- though I'd love to, since Pale Fire is my favorite novel by Nabokov and thus I always enjoys being able to use it as a point of entry into dialectics. Plus I'm afraid I'm several thousand miles away from my references on narratology, so my developed responses would still seem a little thin to me. Suffice it to say, in short shrift form, that though I still do think that a strong case can and should be made for RPG play as the creation (in some sense and to whatever degree) an emergent participatory story, I do find your arguments qua standard play as engagement with an artworld that can lead to the production of story persuasive. I niggle with the details -- what you describe would seem to deny that improvisational theatre is a production of story, for example -- but overall I find it difficult to find an immediate flaw in your logic.

A tip of the cap to Bill, too, for extensive posts on immersion and structure. His quoted S&Z are quite right to point out a lessening of the importance of immersion in literature; though verisimilitude is often valued in a text, the decline of naturalism and other strong realist techniques has lead to tendency to put qualitative judgments on other qualities than an immersive reflection of a presumed real.

Quote from: Phillip;459249So what? Does this mean we should trash the technological advances of 30+ years and go back to unfilled polygons rendered slowly because "it's just a fallacy" that there is any pleasure in a more convincing simulation?

What does something being pleasurable have to do with it being a game?

Quote from: Peregrin;459240I know where you're coming from, but it could've been phrased much better.  The way you phrased it, it's like saying one has to disprove God in order for him not to exist.  Sticky logical trap, is all.

Not really. It would be interesting to see you try to demonstrate the likeness, but I am confident that, no, logically, it is in fact not there.

The way I phrased it is just like saying that when you tell me that my claim as to where my pleasure comes from is false, you had better have some evidence. Otherwise, "What will you believe, your own two eyes or me?" is not an argument in your favor!

Quote from: Peregrin;459251What does something being pleasurable have to do with it being a game?

That depends on the nature of the game and of the person experiencing the pleasure.

Quote from: Phillip;459249That's a marvel of vagueness, Bill. You get a perfect score for avoiding clear reference to absolutely anything.

Do you mean that "fallacy" is being used to mean something other than a false, erroneous, misleading, deceptive, etc., belief or statement? What, then?

Are you referring to some other term being used in some other sense?


So what? Does this mean we should trash the technological advances of 30+ years and go back to unfilled polygons rendered slowly because "it's just a fallacy" that there is any pleasure in a more convincing simulation?

"Oh, no, we don't really mean such an extreme. We just left out key words such as 'all' for the heck of it."

Well, then, where are your alleged extremists on the other side?

I am not seeing any profundity there.

How come you're being so flame-y? I've tried to explain what I consider to be your misunderstanding, but it seems like your back is up. But immersion is a touchy subject, so I guess it's understandable. Let me try again.

S&Z are indeed mainly concerned with videogames, and they are skeptical of approaches that see more powerful simulation--flashier graphics and so forth--as the key to producing better play. A game's quality as a game is not necessarily connected to how good its graphics are, just like a movie's quality as a movie is not necessarily connected to how good its special effects are. Understanding the graphics or the SFX as the point of the thing misses the point of why you're creating it in the first place. Arguably, those things should be deployed in the service of a better game or a better story. At least, that's S&Z's position. You can disagree, and say that better graphics are just better, period, but their reasoning is clear, and the position that fancy graphics do not make a game good is actually rather a commonplace.

Salen & Zimmerman don't talk about RPGs (ever, really), but I see a parallel in their discussion of the immersive fallacy to the position taken by some RPGers that the defining characteristic and the objective of game design (at all levels, including DM-level dungeon design, to use a D&Dism) must be to make the medium transparent so that players are transported to a fictional world that then "seems real." I'd say that the fictional world can seem real without that transparency, and that pursuing "immersion" for its own sake can conceivably be counter-productive--that different representational techniques can produce the kind of engagement with the game or the game-world that makes the whole thing worth doing in the first place.

Now, some people will say that RPGs aren't technological, so S&Z's "immersive fallacy" can't apply, but face-to-face interaction is a medium, too.

*edit*

Bill said it better than I did.