One thing I and others noted, in reporting on former Ultima Online lead designer Raph Koster’s thoughts on immersion as a core game virtue was that a solid definition of immersion needed to be settled upon before Mr. Koster’s thoughts could be fully considered. Happily, he has supplied the definition he was using when authoring his original post on the topic, and has also addressed many of the questions that post raised, in a round-up/FAQ response post:

Immersion is a slippery word. What did you actually mean?

I meant the sense of playing a game without ever getting its mechanics rubbed in your face. In the past I have said that there are two core abilities a designer needs to have: to be able to strip away all the surface and only see the math and systems; and to do the exact opposite, and only see the surfaces, the fantasy of it.

These are also two ways to play a game. You can come to it as purely a math puzzle to solve, or you can come at it as an experience. And ironically, with all the advances we have made in terms of presentation, it feels like more and more games are less about the experience and more about the acronyms and mechanics.

It’s interesting to note that his definition of immersion above dovetails with what a lot of people here (and on the UDIC Facebook page) had to say about immersion, which is that (as it is defined above) it is something that most games need to offer.

My own example, Jetpack Joyride is “immersive” per Koster’s definition, precisely because it doesn’t really throw the core mechanics of the game (touch screen to rise/release to fall) in your face. Some of the side mechanics (e.g. the occasionally-enabled ability to high-five the terrified scientists running about the facility) are brought to your attention more directly, but even this is handled in a pretty sly way.

Koster also gets into his reasons for writing the post, which seem to have a lot to do with the “free to play” (F2P) model that has become rather the rage of late amongst mobile and browser games (and also some desktop titles). Do be sure to give the post a full and complete read; he briefly touches on several interesting topics and offers up some decent food for thought.