Prime Junta
RPGCodex' Little BRO
- Joined
- October 19, 2006
- Messages
- 8,540
Not to be clever, but it's you. I said kids become immersed "with" boxes, not "in" boxes.
But is "immersed with" correct? It *sounds* incorrect to me. Perhaps someone who actually understands English grammar could chip in?
(FWIW, I Googled "immersed with" and "immersed in," and the former came up with about 42,000 hits, the first of which was "Ganesh idol immersed with great fanfare," while the latter had over three million. If that means anything.)
Shakespeare probably described this concept best in his prologue to Henry V. Knowing that his troupe was unable to represent what they were about to depict with any amount of realism at all, he called on his audience to suspend their disbelief. He encouraged them to imagine things like great army and navy battles.
I understand the concept and I agree. The difference in my reading is that IMO Pagliarulo's use of "immersion" makes it pretty clear that he means spatial immersion, not the narrative immersion Shakespeare was talking about.
That's why kids can become immersed by playing with boxes. They do what Shakespeare encouraged his audience to do, and they do it with nothing more than a box.
But, again, I believe we're talking about two different things.
For kicks, re-read Pagliarulo's comments, but mentally add a "spatial" before every "immersion." Does it read any differently? I think it does -- specifically, I think it makes a lot more sense; in particular, he says he was hooked by a variety of third-person games. This is contradictory, if you believe that he uses "immersion" in the broader sense: how could he become so engrossed with them if he believes that a first-person perspective is a prerequisite for it?
Therefore, I believe the qualifier is implicit. It's a pity nobody bothered to ask him whether he meant spatial immersion or immersion in general, though.
Edit: also read DArtagnan's comments on this thread, re Tetris and others. I for one have been completely "immersed" in Tetris, to the point that I've played an entire night of it. Yet DArtagnan specifically states that Tetris has no immersive properties. This statement only makes sense if he, too, is using "immersion" in the "spatial immersion" sense.
IOW, I believe this whole hoopla may be a misunderstanding about semantics -- Pagliarulo talking about spatial immersion, his opponents interpreting it as narrative immersion, or immersion in general.
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2006
- Messages
- 8,540