One approach to the study and criticism of video games emphasizes the experiential aspect of action / interaction. Occasionally this approach is applied with a rigor that reveals the functionally identical nature of concepts that we tend to understand as separate, sometimes apposite and others opposite: concepts such as space, and time, and action. Colliding and distilling such concepts can be hugely beneficial. Still, there is a problem with an experiential emphasis in video games: the unavoidable engagement of one of the field’s most heavily-loaded and broadly-used terms, immersion.
I tend to avoid discussion of immersion wholesale. It is simply too complicated a topic to treat lightly, one with various stakeholders who reasonably occupy positions that inevitably complicate each other. It is also generally understood to be, conceptually, of core importance to video games. So although my preference is to discourage discussion by withholding recognition, I must admit that this position is wholly indefensible. So something must be done.
I came across the following today while re-reading The Cultural Turn for a project unrelated to video games. In reference to the design of the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, Jameson writes:
I am tempted to say that such space makes it impossible for us to use the language of volume or volumes any longer, since these last are impossible to seize. Hanging streamers indeed suffuse this empty space in such a way as to distract systematically and deliberately from whatever form it might be supposed to have; while a constant busyness gives the feeling that emptiness is here absolutely packed, that it is an element within which you yourself are immersed, without any of that distance that formerly enabled the perception of perspective or volume. You are in this hyperspace up to your eyes and your body; and if it seemed to you before that the suppression of depth observable in postmodern painting or literature would necessarily be difficult to achieve in architecture itself, perhaps you may now be willing to see this bewildering immersion as its formal equivalent in the new medium. (14, in the 2009 edition)
We can understand Jameson’s astute observations as not so much about a building, but about the idea of place as an elementary composite resulting from the collision of space, time, and action. This collision originates in the object but occurs in the subject. Because the subject is not the site of manufacture but is the site of assembly, the three elements are functionally inseparable.
The result of this functional inseparability, of the assembly of place within the subject, is immersion.
If you’ll permit the crime of wanton recontextualization, I’ll add that I think that the above quote says much more about video games than it does brick-and-mortar buildings. What do you think?
Pseudoplay 
Is Jameson describing a negative sensation, or does he like this space? Out of context, he could be describing an architectural space as ideological, so different strains of Marxism come to mind.
I guess what I’m thinking is to what degree does the object call to, beckon, or interpellate (Althusser) the subject to be the subject of this experience? That is, the game or space *immerses* the subject in certain experiences, because the subject behind the object (creator-subject) is trying to elicit something in the consumer-subject. You can’t pretend that the object is innocently the origin of a collision that occurs subjectively because that obscures the creator-subjects behind the object. The object is the site of the collision, but it is a site of contestation as creator tries to impose/create an experience in other subjects. The consumer-subjects, in turn, aren’t powerless – creativity isn’t hegemonic – but are, as you point out, assembly points, but that assembly is not acontextual and occurs in contrivance with, or in opposition to, the will of the creator.
From this perspective (which is roughly Marxist), immersion (in any sense) happens when the consumer-subject *gives in* to the experience that the object is trying to impose on behalf of the creator-subject. Immersion is submission.
Well written, John, and incisive! Interpellation is hugely relevant here, and it’s something that I was having trouble even thinking about. Your explanation packs a punch, and I’m grateful for it.
Here are a few thoughts (essentially unanswered questions, decreasingly valuable currency around this blog the more of them I pile up…):
Your point that we “can’t pretend that the object is innocently the origin of a collision…” is well taken, and I think you’re perfectly correct. Within this framework, I wonder: can the *player* suppose the origin is in the object? Does the act of playing shift the functional (as opposed to the actual) point of origin, for the player, from the creator-subject to the object? Essentially: Can the site of collision be subjectively, perspectivally mobile?
These questions are troubled by your astute description of the site of collision as a site of contestation between the creator-subject and the consumer-subject. The problem that arises is the necessity of explaining the occurrence of collision without immersion. I wonder: Does the consumer’s contrivance with and/or opposition to the will of the creator potentially shift the location of collision? This is a highly self-serving question in that it clings to the possibility of collision within the player-subject. It’s my blog, you’ll get that from time to time. The alternative, of course, is that immersion is unrelated to the site of collision. I’m not quite ready to entertain that possibility. =D
Your conclusion that immersion is submission is nearly perfect, but I’ll still quibble. Do you think the word submission implies the necessary subjective action? I’m not sure. I’m not sure that Marxist discourse allows the necessary gradation of the concept of submission to support my question. Hmm!
Thanks again for doing all that work for me! š
The subjective “action” that results in submission/immersion is an action wherein the consumer-subject “chooses” (deliberately or out of ignorance) to take the object as object (rather than as a manifestation of the creator-subject; the creator-subject, incidentally, can be social as well as individual).
And really I’m just mucking around, but I’m surprised at how well the kinds of Marxist questions raised in post-WW2 France apply to gaming, particularly in terms of immersion. Alex Golub’s contention that it’s not versimilitude but project that results in immersive experience is Sartrean, for example. I’d broaden Alex’s assertion out in that there has to be a submission involved for project to be immersive, too. The project is only a project, I think, if one submits to the objective reality of the game, to the game as independent of the creator-subject. I think this might be true of art. Art is immersive to the extent that the consumer-subject doesn’t think about how it is made.