Immersion, Agency and Invocational Media

This week we were introduced to some rather technical terminologies, such as, diegetic immersion, situated immersion, invocational media, agency and structural incoherence. These terms as it turns out, are somehow all interrelated and support each other. If we really think about it immersion and invocational media should be problematic. How is it that invocational media does not hinder immersion? The set up of the media is to cause an action elsewhere. This should make users of the technology aware that their actions are causing things to happen. In the context of video games this aspect of invocational media should draw attention to the fact that users are playing a video game therefore break immersion through the fact that one is conscious of one’s actions. However, this ‘problem’ is bridged with the idea of agency in video games. Many have argued that video games is a unique media form due to the agency it possesses. Whether video games actually possesses agency or not is a different debate but for now, lets just say they do. Agency is technically given to the player by invocation media. If we connect this back to the idea of immersion then I cannot conclude that total immersion is possible while playing video games because a level of awareness will always be present due to the use of invocational media and the fact that one is aware of one’s agency within the experience of the game space.