Fundamental Components of the Gameplay Experience: Analysing Immersion

By Laura Ermi, Frans Mäyrä. DiGRA Conference, 2005

998 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper presents a gameplay experience model, assesses its potential as a tool for research and presents some directions for future work. The presented model was born from observations among game-playing children and their non-player parents, which directed us to have a closer look at the complex nature of gameplay experience. Our research led into a heuristic gameplay experience model that identifies some of the key components and processes that are relevant in the experience of gameplay, with a particular focus on immersion. The model includes three components: sensory, challenge-based and imaginative immersion (SCI-model). The classification was assessed with self-evaluation questionnaires filled in by informants who played different popular games. It was found that the gameplay experiences related to these games did indeed differ as expected in terms of the identified three immersion components.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/633243aadbf0cad11b083efc5f73b42b7e92aede

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Developmental and Educational Psychology

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Gameplay Engagement and Learning in Game-Based Learning (2015, background): “This effect occurs because it was observed that games can engage players to learn (Dickey, 2005; Whitton, 2011), can include multisensory settings, and can stimulate players’ ability to think and create meaning (Ermi & Mayra, 2005).”
Immersion revisited: A review of existing definitions of immersion and their relation to different theories of presence (2016, methodology): “An important difference is that the current taxonomy does not include immersion as a response to being enveloped by technology, that is, sensory immersion (Ermi & Mäyrä, 2005) or perceptual immersion (McMahan, 2003).”
Taking "Fun and Games" Seriously: Proposing the Hedonic-Motivation System Adoption Model (HMSAM) (2012, background): “Because immersion is the consequence of multiple stages of increased attention over time (see for e.g., Brown & Cairns, 2004; Chen, 2007; Ermi & Mäyrä, 2005; Jennett et al., 2008; Weibel et al., 2008; Wild et al., 1995; Witmer & Singer, 1998), increases in curiosity in an HMS context should lead to…”
The Development and Validation of the Game User Experience Satisfaction Scale (GUESS) (2016, background): “This description, on the surface, sounds like the concept of immersion, which has led researchers to use the two terms interchangeably in the gaming literature (Ermi & Mäyrä, 2005; McMahan, 2003).”
Human-level performance in 3D multiplayer games with population-based reinforcement learning (2018, methodology): “We approach this challenge by studying team-based multiplayer 3D first-person video games, a genre which is particularly immersive for humans (16) and has even been shown to improve a wide range of cognitive abilities (21).”
Characterising and measuring user experiences in digital games (2007, positive): “…are in the process of developing the Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ) which covers a range of digital game experiences that have been identified through reviewing theoretical accounts of player experiences (e.g., [5,13]) as well as focus group explorations with both hardcore and casual gamers.”
Flow and immersion in first-person shooters: measuring the player's gameplay experience (2008, background): “In the study of Ermi and Mäyrä [11], the game Half-Life 2 (Valve Corporation, 2004) was ranked highest in all dimensions of the SCI model, thus making it a good candidate for studies investigating immersion.”
Gameful Experience in Gamification: Construction and Validation of a Gameful Experience Scale [GAMEX] (2018, background): “” It is considered a precondition of flow and is often used instead of flow to describe the gaming experience, because it represents a non-optimal state that is less extreme than flow (Brown and Cairns 2004; Ermi and Mäyrä 2005; Jennett et al. 2008).”