Articles related to the topic 1

“People who play video games often report the sense of immersion in the game with a particular feature of immersion being a loss of the sense of time passing……. Additionally, music was able to influence immersion by both increasing it or decreasing it depending on the choice of music.” (T. Sanders & P. Cairns, 2010)

This week, I read an essay written by Timothy Sanders and Paul Cairns, named “Time perception, immersion, and music in video games”. It is an experiment that examined the effect of music on immersion and the perception of time in video games. The study shows that music affects the player’s immersion when playing the game and also affects the player’s perception of the passage of time in real life while playing the game. But this assumes that the right music is chosen, and only the right music can achieve such an effect. For example, Jazz is very suited for the evening, it can give a true sense of evening relaxation when playing the game. In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the customs of the different countries determine the style of music. Zelda has been set in a completely overhead continent, Hyrule. A world that is totally different from the real world, but it is a world players can immerse themselves in when playing the game. Zelda’s music gives the player a sense of what kind of country it is and the world becomes real when the environment seen is highly consistent with the style of the music heard. Music is a very important part of video games, and even in other genres of games.

“Immersion, as understood here, is the sense of being “in a game” where a person’s thoughts, attention, and goals are all focused in and around the game as opposed to attending to being concerned with anything else, such as what is going on in the room around them.” (T. Sanders & P. Cairns, 2010)

In their article, Timothy Sanders and Paul Cairns also define the term immersion. The ‘in-game’ is not only the physical sense of being in the game but also mean the sense that the player’s mind and senses are in the game. So when we build a virtual reality environment, we only need to create a feeling that can make the player feel that the world is real and complete. It can also be referred to as “immersion.