Sound Design Principles: Immersion
Mäyrä and Ermi (2005) from the University of Tampere notes that immersion can be broken down into three different factors: sensory, challenge-based and imaginative immersion (the SCI model).
Sensory Immersion
Sensory immersion is related to both the audio and visual side of video games, and how well audio cooperates with the game’s visual.
Video games have evolved over time visually and audibly from Pong to now the 2024’s Best Audio Design of
The Game Awards: Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II on Xbox. Outside of video games, large scale monitors, better frame rates and immersive systems can
“easily overpower the sensory information coming from the real world, and the player becomes entirely focused on the game world and its stimuli.” (Mäyrä and Ermi, 2005).
In fact, Sinclair (2020) looks at how the sound systems of a video game can impact its immersion.
- Non-immersive systems: one sensory input. For example, a 3D game on a laptop with no audio only affects the sensory input of vision
- Semi-immersive systems: A TV or a projection screen with audio
- Fully immersive systems: VR systems/head mounted display (HMD) with audio (the feeling of being in the virtual world)
Challenge-based Immersion
Challenge-based immersion is focused more on how interactivity affects the immersion of a video game. The type of immersion where the player is content with the balance between a challenge and ability which includes both physical and mental skills.
Imaginative immersion
Role-playing games excel at imaginative immersion, where the player is invited to use their own imagination to feel for, or even identify as a part of the world’s characters and story. Dungeons and Dragons is a notable example of this, where the most basic playstyle of the game is player with a pencil and paper, and the players at the table use the words of the dungeon master (the narrator of the story) and their own imagination to immerse themselves in the fictional world.