Johansson
Troels Degn Johansson
Assistant Professor, Head of Studies
The IT-University of Copenhagen
tdj@it-c.dk
System Immersion in Civilization and other strategy games
Abstract
Concepts of immersion have been pivotal for the formative theories of computer games. However, as Marie-Laure Ryan and others have pointed out, admitting that experiences of immersion may be based on a number of psychological registers different from sensory perception, concepts of immersion claiming to be general but relating primarily to VR-technologies need to be discussed within a much broader scope. Thus one should speak of not only perceptual but also e.g. textual, narrative, and emotional immersion; registers that in fact may lend themselves to much stronger experiences of immersion than the perceptual one. Setting of from Ted Friedman's analyses of Civilization and SimCity, this paper seeks to further re-consider the concept of immersion in respect of Friedman's claim that the player subject in these strategy games is supposed to "learn to think like a computer", that is, to act within a computational system, rather than simply being positioned as a "supreme emperor" or "godly instance". Friedman suggests that we should draw upon cybernetics and system theory in order to obtain a better understanding of the special experience of flow and immersion at play in Civilization and SimCity, but unfortunately he never really pursue this aim systematically himself. Basing itself on an analysis of Civilization II and a conceptual analysis of the concept of immersion with reference to cybernetics, this paper advances a concept of system immersion that should capture the aesthetic experience of immersion that characterizes this game. Further it seeks to assess the pertinence of this concept in respect of other types of strategy games and of computer-games in general.
Biography:
Troels Degn Johansson is an Assistant Professor and Head of Studies at the IT-University of Copenhagen. Author of a number of works on pictorial representation, aesthetics, and modernity with special reference to cinema and new media. Current studies on computer games are engaged primarily with spatial and aesthetic aspects, focusing on spatial perception and level design for multiplayer-shooters, rhetorical aspects of computer-games in art and entertainment, and cybernetic aspects of computer-games with special reference to strategy games.
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