Analog Game Studies

This essay engages and seeks to articulate voluntary and emergent forms of immersion as a continuum in live-action role-playing games. A player can shift from one to the other, back-and-forth and always in hybridized ways, throughout the same instance of an immersive experience. The essay argues that even strong immersion does not involve losing contact with the reality outside the object of immersion and some amount of consent from the person experiencing immersion is always necessary. Moreover, the essay compares two seemingly distinct postures—the larper and the anthropologist—to argue that they frequently share a common interest in understanding diverse human experiences by resorting to immersion to achieve that goal, giving way to understanding immersion as a method.