Modelling Game Immersion

In his research,Calleja(2007) proposed an analytical model of player involve-ment (immersion), in digital games, in order to enable researchers to describe and analyse the attention (absorption) of the players during gameplay.

Calleja (2007)’s Digital Game Involvement (DGI) model consists of six types of player involvement, called frames, acting over two temporal phases:

the macro-involvement – that explores the attributes that sustain the long term engagement of the user to a game – and the micro-involvement – that concentrates on the real-time game-playing experience. These six frames of involvement are:

• Tactical – user engagement through forms of decision making within the context of the game.

• Performative – interaction of the user with the controls of the game.

• Affective – positive cognitive excitation of the player due to the game type and context.

• Shared – aspects of communication with and in relation to other agents in the game world.

• Narrative – backstory of a particular game (Designed Narrative) and user interpretations of events during game-play (Personal Narrative).

• Spatial – player’s ability to locate himself within wider game area that is not directly visible on the screen.

These frames of user experience are always related to each other and do not usually exist in isolation. However, the extent and significance of each frame depends on the type and properties of each game. The intensification

of the experience through these frames is described by the author’s proposed term, called incorporation. This is “the subjective experience of inhabiting a virtual environment facilitated by the potential to act meaningfully within it while being present to others.” (Calleja,2007). A more detailed description of theDGImodel, their properties and interactions are shown in Table2.1.

Table 2.1: A tabular representation summarising theDGImodel

Tactical First Person

Covers all aspects of communication with and relation to other agents in the game world. Anchors the player, through the controlled agent, firmly to the location both spatially and socially within the represented environment. Intensifies when other agents respond to the player, especially when other agents are controlled by humans. A more memorable and intense experience is created when people

are collaborating together to achieve common goals through their agents.

It is related to player's ability to locate himself within wider game area that is not directly visible on the screen and the ways distances can be traversed (e.g. mental mapping of the virtual world). Covers aspects like exploration and exploitation of game space for strategic purposes. Game-space becomes a

part of player's immediate surroundings. Its intensification is crucial for the achievement of a sense of comfort and place, both in the physical and digital worlds.

Relates to "the subjective experience of inhabitation a virtual environment facilitated by the potential to act meaningfully within it while being present to others." It is the state of deep involvement that players

interpret their avatar actions as their own (assimiliation) and players are immersed to the game's environment (corporeal embodiment) . Its difference with the concept of flow is that it emphasises to virtual

spatial qualities (word as habitable domain to act) than relating experiential user activities in the game environment (loss of consciousness). Incorporation creates emotionally moving incidents. The reduction of

conscious effort devoted to each frame increases the ways the game can be engaged (internalisation) . Digital Game Involvement Model

Incorporation

History and background of game's world or a particular quest. It tends to influence and shape but not determine the formation of Personal Narrative. It assists with the progression of the game but

it can be ignored as players are not required to engage with it entirely.

Players interpretation of game-play experience. It is based on specific actions of the player and their resultant outcomes. The build-up of these interpretation can magnify the Affective frame.

More freedom through Performative Involvement means that engagement is more rewarding, as a result there is a more memorable Personal narrative.

Explores the attributes that sustain the long term engagement of the user to a game.

Micro-Involvement

Concentrates on the moment by moment involvement of the game-playing experience.

Macro-Involvement

Performative is the actualisation

of Tactical involvement. This is the execution of

established

Relates to all modes of control, ranging from learning controls to fluency of internalised movements.

Conscious attention describes the focus of the user on the controls because user has not completely mastered them or a complex action needs to be carried out. The involvement through the frame is maximised through different forms of movement available by the game, since this enables acting upon the environment, and

the learning curve of the controls involved.

Narrative

Represents the engagement through all forms of decision making of the player, through the context of the game. It covers both the interaction with rules and game

environment/players. As the user learns the effect of certain actions, (s)he decreases the uncertainty and also increases the ability to plan far into the future.

Game's ability to be compelling enough in order to sustain engagement via cognitive and affective expectations of the users about the game. Player's select certain types of games as entertainment to achieve an optimal level of arousal - Concept of Excitatory Homeostasis. Under-Stimulated people

use arousing media content whereas Over-Stimulated people prefer calmer media content. Players need to be able to tweak game settings in order to get the desired affective change.

2.2 user modelling 43

Similarly,Suh et al.(2015) proposed a theoretical framework that predicts user engagement through general gamified (use of game elements) systems.

Their framework combines the basic psychological needs theory (BPNT) (Ryan and Deci,2000a,b) – that describes the engagement of people in activities that are enjoyable to them – and mechanics-dynamics-aesthetics (MDA) theory (Hunicke et al.,2004) – that describes how certain game elements impact on enjoyment.

TheBPNTargues that humans tend to enjoy doing something when they are self-motivated to do so. This enjoyment is stimulated by three factors and as a result increase user engagement:

1. Autonomy: sense of desire to do a task.

2. Competence: feelings of achievement (“effectance motivation").

3. Relatedness: feelings of connection to others.

TheMDAtheory concentrates on the game elements that generate certain reactions from players. It consists of three levels:

1. Game Mechanics: components and rules of the game.

2. Game Dynamics: behaviour of mechanics on interaction with player 3. Game Aesthetics: user experience while interacting with the game Suh et al.(2015) proposes an integrative theoretical model betweenBPNT

andMDAtheory by linking game dynamics with the enjoyment’s stimulating factors and game aesthetics with user engagement. In order to support these linkages in their theory, they inferred several hypotheses on the specific variables involved and conducted a survey method from users of gamified systems. Using the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach they valid-ate their model and verify most of their hypotheses. They showed that game dynamics positively influence user engagement.

It is important to mention that in their research, user engagement was assessed through its three sub-dimensions (Schaufeli et al.,2002):

• vigor: willingness of the user to do a certain gamified activity.

• dedication: sense of significance and pride of performing the activity.

• absorption: full concentration and immersion in the activity.

Our measure of immersion in our model (described in Chapter4), is called Physiological Attention. Its execution is entirely domain-specific but it can be

generalised to any task or game. In theDGImodel, the engagement is split and described through the six different frames. Whereas deep involvement and maximum involvement of the related frames is considered as incorporation. In

BPNTthey show that engagement relates to the person’s personal desires and enjoyment factors that are stimulated by the game’s elements.

Since in our case we need to evaluate the attention of the user, we simplify the measure of engagement into two aspects: game performance and physiolo-gical state of the user. We assume that as long as the user’s performance to the game is above a certain threshold then the user is engaged. However, when they are below, we look for engagement through their physiological factors (i.e. eye gaze, head pose); as associated research revealed that these are also related to immersion.