Conclusion

At the beginning of my blog it was necessary to define what exactly it was that I wanted to look at, since the word Immersion is such an encompassing word when referring to digital games, I needed to be able to communicate the specifics of my investigation. After looking at Frans Mayra's fundamental components of immersion, it was apparent to me that technologies effect upon immersion would be rooted within sensory immersion more so than challenge based or imaginative immersion. I didn’t want to delve too deep into aspects of immersion as I wanted to keep the blog focused more on the relationship between technology and immersion rather than what makes a game immersive, even though it was at first necessary to identify in a basic way what makes games immersive in order to see where technology comes into the equation.

Even though I had managed to break down immersion into more relevant terminology, there was still a need to break it down further and learn what I could about "sensory immersion". I found a breakdown of sensory immersion, and managed to learn that there were considered to be levels of immersion within sensory immersion which determined how effective a virtual environment can be on its user by taking into the way that artificial environment stimulates the user. I felt this was heading somewhere that I wanted to go with my investigation, and that it could be used to further understand the concepts of virtual reality. Once a virtual 3D environment has been made, how does technology effect how the user absorbs them self within that environment? I thought that technology was the platform for the stimuli needed to interact within a virtual reality. Since technology provides us the sensory information needed in order to interact with software and games, it’s obvious that the stimuli of an artificial environment is communicated to us through screens and headphones, through our eyes and ears. So far touch, taste and smell aren’t associated with games the same sight and sound are therefore currently immersion relies heavily on audio/visual technology.

Since in my opinion, virtual reality is the definition of a immersive experience, I wanted to look at what virtual reality is, how we see it, and how we are developing technology towards that point where we achieve the kind of virtual reality only realised within fiction. At first I looked at the development into immersive displays, an important element of virtual reality is to give the player a feeling of presence within the game, the iCube and JTAC virtual trainer dome give a level of illusion which is far beyond that of LCD or plasma screen. At this point I began to wonder where my preconceptions of virtual reality technology came from, and looked at the science fiction I had seen, which I felt had given me those ideas of VR. I feel that fiction can sometimes be a prediction of what will be realised in the future, since a lot of the gadgets that are everyday objects to me, were inconceivable when my father was my age. Looking at science-fictions such as The Matrix and Star Trek I began to see similarities between the holodeck and the iCube. I’m still uncertain as to whether fiction does predict future technology, or whether developers strive to realise fictional gadgets from their childhood, but it seems to take a creative mind to develop an idea that maybe someone who knew more about that subject would see the difficulties in achieving that idea. At the beginning of my blog it was necessary to define what exactly it was that I wanted to look at, since the word Immersion is such an encompassing word when referring to digital games, I needed to be able to communicate the specifics of my investigation. After looking at Frans Mayra's fundamental components of immersion, it was apparent to me that technologies effect upon immersion would be rooted within sensory immersion more so than challenge based or imaginative immersion. I didn’t want to delve too deep into aspects of immersion as I wanted to keep the blog focused more on the relationship between technology and immersion rather than what makes a game immersive, even though it was at first necessary to identify in a basic way what makes games immersive in order to see where technology comes into the equation.

Even though I had managed to break down immersion into more relevant terminology, there was still a need to break it down further and learn what I could about "sensory immersion". I found a breakdown of sensory immersion, and managed to learn that there were considered to be levels of immersion within sensory immersion which determined how effective a virtual environment can be on its user by taking into the way that artificial environment stimulates the user. I felt this was heading somewhere that I wanted to go with my investigation, and that it could be used to further understand the concepts of virtual reality. Once a virtual 3D environment has been made, how does technology effect how the user absorbs them self within that environment? I thought that technology was the platform for the stimuli needed to interact within a virtual reality. Since technology provides us the sensory information needed in order to interact with software and games, it’s obvious that the stimuli of an artificial environment is communicated to us through screens and headphones, through our eyes and ears. So far touch, taste and smell aren’t associated with games the same sight and sound are therefore currently immersion relies heavily on audio/visual technology.

Since in my opinion, virtual reality is the definition of a immersive experience, I wanted to look at what virtual reality is, how we see it, and how we are developing technology towards that point where we achieve the kind of virtual reality only realised within fiction. At first I looked at the development into immersive displays, an important element of virtual reality is to give the player a feeling of presence within the game, the iCube and JTAC virtual trainer dome give a level of illusion which is far beyond that of lsd or plasma screen. At this point I began to wonder where my preconceptions of virtual reality technology came from, and looked at the science fiction I had seen, which I felt had given me those ideas of VR. I feel that fiction can sometimes be a prediction of what will be realised in the future, since a lot of the gadgets that are everyday objects to me, were inconceivable when my father was my age. Looking at science-fictions such as The Matrix and Star Trek I began to see similarities between the holodeck and the iCube. I’m still uncertain as to whether fiction does predict future technology, or whether developers strive to realise fictional gadgets from their childhood, but it seems to take a creative mind to develop an idea that maybe someone who knew more about that subject would see the difficulties in achieving that idea.

As I began to move on from Virtual Reality, I looked at other forms of stimuli which could help immersion into digital environments, so far audio-visual technology was a straight progression but what about other technology that could give gamers even more sensory information? The holodeck had a complex system of gravity manipulation and holomatter concerning how users could interact within that, and the 3rd space bullet vest proved to be a lower but still high tech kinetic simulator, suggesting to the player that they had been shot when played along with a FPS. While smell and taste are still our of grasp at the moment, kinetic sensory technology could be a definite item for exploration and could prove to be an important factor to sensory immersion in the future. Once I had looked at all the outcomes for how games can communicate to the player, I moved onto looking at how the player could communicate back with the game.

There has been a lot of interesting interfaces for games including light guns, motion sensors and dance mats; I wanted to see if interfaces like these could be used for increased interactivity with digital games. At first I thought that controllers like the Guitar Hero guitar could be excellent interfaces for games because they mimic real things in a similar way to the Wiimote. But then as I looked further into the more I realised that the games behind these controllers were no more than arcade games without realistic environments or stable narratives, the immersive factors of those games relied solely on the quick paced challenge based immersion. They had taken the focus and players presence away from the digital games onto real space rather than artificial space within the game.

Finally the article on the progression of games aesthetics in relationship to the level of technology that was available when those games was made, was ideal for being able to sum up what I had found. The article identified a solid link between games and technology and also discussed how the progression of digital games up to this point was directly related to the development of technology. Since I had already associated audio-visuals within games with sensory immersion, it could easily be seen that technology had an effect on sensory immersion as it developed over the last 20 years. The article also contained a section which asked how the progression of technology would continue to effect games in the future. While being uncertain, both games and technology will continue to develop in some way in the future. Once photo-realism is achieved within games, there is still room to develop other areas of interaction between players and digital environments, which seems to be the missing element of the development of the fictional idea I had earlier on Virtual Reality. While there is technology in development which resembles the audio-visual components of virtual reality, there is little on the advanced AI needed to communicate with games in a natural linguistic manner as seen in the holodeck on Star Trek. Ultimately no matter how we try to predict the further development of games and technology, it is undoubtable that they are related and that technology has the power to affect the gamer’s experience, lending itself as a platform for immersion by continuing to feed us that stimuli which gives us an escape from the real world.

For bibliography, see bottom of web page.