Gamer Zen

Kevin brought up an interesting point in Friday's lecture of 'skim reading' a particular text. I've had similar experiences while playing games with my first memory of it dating back to the first crash bandicoot game. I remeber being so familiar with the game that I could literally zone out of the game itself, not realizing what I had done for the past 30 minutes or so. As i'd come back to my senses (often to do a piss or grab a bite, usually both (but not at the same time -_-) i'd sit there for a moment stupified as to how I went from dodging Tiny the tiger's lions to running away from giant, rolling snowballs. At the time I thought it was pretty badass of me to experience this odd phenomenon, like I had attained some kind of 'drunken-master, kung fu-esque' trance that I could enter with heavy doses of gaming. This was the first thing that came to my mind in the lecture and I pondered on its relevance to videogame theory. Was this a case of super duper immersion? That I was so immersed in this game my concious self had an outer body experience and projected itself into this virtual world of spining bandicoots and magica tribal masks. Or perhaps it was the opposite? Perhaps I was so tired and so familiar with the game I could interact with it in the most minimal possible level. Maybe it was both? At first it seemed natural to me that these explanations cannot both be true. How can one be so engaged in something that is apparently so unengaging? 'Perhaps there is more than one type of immersion out there?' I pondered to myself. Luckily, there is! This diegetic v situated immersion debarcle had finally seen the eureka light bulb light up like a saturday kids cartoon. Think spongebob. Perhaps, like mention in the lecture, I had completely leapfrogged the diegetic part and had landed straight into the situatedly virtualness of crash's pixelated world. Or maybe I've gone mad....thoughts?

Joshua-Dean