Evan Torner

As as gamer with interest in both tabletop and video game rpgs, I was very much looking forward to this book. But as its cumbersome title suggests, Immersive Gameplay: Essays on Participatory Media and Role-Playing is a dry, academic collection of ten pieces that take extremely fascinating concepts and discuss them in remarkably boring ways. As I started reading, I immediately felt like I would have to grab a dictionary and start taking notes - the stiffly didactic writing put me back into show more school mode, where reading texts becomes a struggle even if one wants to learn about the subject. It’s unfortunate, as I wanted to read this book and more, I wanted to enjoy it; but in general, all the authors made it a chore to get through their material.

Of course, the book’s intended audience may well be academics in academic environment. But if so, this is sadly keeping other audiences from appreciating the ideas and contributing to the conversation about various forms of gameplay. I’m not saying that this sort of book needs to be dumbed down or made into some chatty soundbites. But others, such as Jane McGonigal in Reality Is Broken, have written about these concepts in clear and engaging ways, delving into philosophy and sociology without getting bogged down.

I also found the various essays to be strangely lacking in focus - although the collection aims to encompass both “participatory media” and role-playing games, I think it would have been more effective to focus on one or the other. As it is, veering from D&D to reality TV to Facebook games makes for very wide and often incongruous subjects. On the other hand, many authors spend a lot of time rehashing the same concepts (liminal space, the “magic circle”, “flow”, etc) over and over, while also making much of the idea of “immersion” itself. As as result, the essays become somewhat repetitive. I realize that both these issues are due to the fact that all the authors are likely writing without any interaction with the others, but it makes the book less readable as a whole.

Overall, I think this had a lot of potential and contained plenty of good information; but it ended up as a rather frustrating slog through jargon and widely scattered themes. show less

Immersive Gameplay is a collection of essays on participatory media and role playing, as the title suggests. It explores the interesting psychological effect role playing has on the mind, and what it says about us when we make choices within the 'safe' environment of games and play. Or, at least, I believe it tries to, anyway...

Like any collection of essays some items had me entranced and others had me bored and uninterested. Some authors had very inspired and interesting theories and others show more made wild assumptions and called it science, and others said very little at all other than to spend an entire article recounting someone else's experiment and applying their hypothesis to it.

The collaboration as a whole could be better. I'm not even really sure who the intended audience is. It is very scholarly in nature but it also requires knowledge related to gaming, such as knowing what LARPing and MMORPGs are. (My computer's spellcheck doesn't.) It's quite a niche market, and if BOTH of these don't apply to you it's possible you'll find it as boring as I did at times. As a gamer I was interested in what they had to say but as a non-scholar popular science lover I found their writing tedious and sleep-inducing. show less

Immersive Gameplay edited by Evan Torner and William White provides a timely set of essays focusing on participatory media and role-playing. The book explores how role-playing games impact psychological states, how immersive experiences connection to culture, society, and reality, and uses of game mechanisms in television and video games. The three selections provide a wonderful cross-section of forward thinking examples and approaches.

These well-researched essays do an excellent job show more connecting well-known scholars and established theories with the next-generation of thinking on immersive technology.

I was impressed that the book was not simply a rehash of World of Warcraft experiences. Instead, the authors explored a wide variety of thoughts on the topic of immersive gameplay and its impact on players.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in role-playing, multi-user virtual experiences, gaming, or other types of participatory media. It will sit alongside Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal, The Art of Immersion by Frank Rose, Third Person by Pat Harrigan, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia by Bernard Suits, and Confronting the Challenged of Participatory Culture & Convergence Culture by Henry Jenkins in my library. show less

Artificial realities occupy the lives of video gamers as computer simulations evolve more pixels on close-circuit screens. Simple television programs are now being replaced with enhanced images that interact with the human brain in ways never before imagined. The collection of essays edited by Evan Torner and William J. White analyzes the new digital phenomenon from various perspectives, including the sociological, psychological, and technological aspects. A new culture is emerging as show more humanity is drawn closer to the machines that are now an extension of human existence. Some argue that this is leading to dehumanizing consequences, as one author questions "the loss of personal identity" in the the throes of game play. Not only does the anthology contain important articles related to the current video gaming fad, but it also looks at reality shows such as "Kid Nation" as a new type of "connectivity" with global viewers. Can children truly make this planet a better world? The same perennial themes as addressed in classical literature by writers, such as William Wordsworth and William Golding, are repackaged in the oxymoron of "reality TV." From a psychological viewpoint, human beings are very cognitively malleable, as another author suggests by linking the role-playing games to the 1961 Milgram Experiment which showed that ordinary people, under certain conditions, can commit unexpected atrocities. Granted, some dangers lurk behind computer and televised interactions, but many researchers conclude that technological advances are happening so quickly that the effects on human beings have not been fully studied--and more studies are needed. Already in some instances,the gaming community allows for female video players to be verbally harassed, which is part of the nascent culture. How is this video-conditioned behavior "bleeding" into the every day social milieu? Have these artificial realities become the mainstay to model behavior for modern society? These and many more questions surface throughout the essay collection. For what it is worth, "Immersive Gameplay" is a helpful introduction to the issues that confront parents, teachers, and politicians for shaping social policy. show less