The relationship between player involvement and immersion: An experimental investigation

This paper investigates the player experience of immersion and its relationship with player involvement in an experimental setting. The paper follows Calleja’s [3] premise that immersion, defined as “the player’s sensation of inhabiting the virtual environment represented onscreen”, is not a stand-alone experience but the result from a blending of a variety of experiential phenomena afforded by involving gameplay. These experiential phenomena are described in Calleja’s [3] player involvement model, developed through qualitative research and identifying six dimensions of involvement in digital games. The aim of our study was to test this player involvement model and its possible conclusion in immersion in a quantitative context. The paper describes the execution of an experimental study in which we manipulated one dimension of player involvement (i.e. narrative involvement), and analyzed how this affects the other dimensions of player involvement on the one hand, and immersion on the other. Our results provide initial support for Calleja’s [3] model, showing that the dimensions of player involvement are interrelated, and have a significant and positive effect on a player’s sense of immersion.