Intensity of affect and immersion

The ideas of affect and immersion we discussed this week really made me think about the potential of agency in video games to exemplify them. Generally my experience with immersion and affect has been restricted to films and tv shows, which can often metaphorically rip your heart out and stomp on it when something happens to a character you love, something which in my experience can truly make you feel genuine pain.
I hadn't really considered that video games can do this too and perhaps in a more intense way. The ideas of agency and situated immersion definitely serve to exemplify any feeling you may experience in playing a game, you ARE the character you're playing or you have control over what is going on and such, you are more likely to blame yourself and wish you had done something different if something goes wrong. I used to be kind of bewildered when I heard my brothers yelling out in annoynace and anger as a character they were playing dies, or something does not go their way in a game, but these ideas allowed me to realise that these may be in fact legitimate reactions to the fate of characters who they have played as for a long time, just like my reactions to a particularly heartbreaking moment on my favourite TV show, maybe even more so because of the extremely personal connection you have with a game when you are the person controlling what is going on and you must deal with what you made happen.