Few days ago I came across some interesting concepts of diegetic and situated immersion. I must say they aren’t hard to understand but they are some confusing concepts... so here it goes. In my understanding, diegetic immersion means being occupied by a form of media (films, books or games) but being aware and able to separate the real world to the fictional world… hence only immersed to an extent that the person is aware that he/she is experiencing a fictional story. Where else situated immersion means the person experiencing a form of media is occupied by the fictional world hence he/she is “transported” to the fictional world as the character in action.
I think I understand definitions okay… but what I find confusing is how I can identify one. Is it possible to see people playing games and saying whether they are “immersed” to an extent that it can be situated immersion? And what I find even more confusing is that I was told that everyone has different suspension of belief (Of Course...) and everyone is different when it comes to immersion hence there is no clear distinction between diegetic immersion and situated immersion.
The fact that I’m trying to draw a clear line between the two terms can be seen as the problem of why I find them so confusing…
Please help me out… lol
Diegetic immersion is not that you can't tell the fictional world from the real world, it's that you're concentrating on it to the point it can take a while for the real world to attract your attention.
ReplyDeleteSituated immersion is operating inside a virtual space.
There's no way of telling what kind of immersion is happening for someone else from the outside.