Abstract. The main characteristics of the computer game narrative are interactive and nonlinear, so this study proposes a questionnaire aim at studying player immersion in the computer game narrative. To evaluate the questionnaire, a survey was conducted on the Internet. After factor analysis and reliability test, an instrument for measuring player immersion were obtained. This instrument not only can be applied to the computer game narrative, it also ca be used to measure user experience in story-oriented virtual reality

Gavriel Salvendy

Hua Qin

Pei-Luen Patrick

CiteSeerX

Player Immersion in the Computer Game Narrative 
Hua Qin 1, Pei-Luen Patrick Rau 1, Gavriel Salvendy 2 
1 Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China  
2 School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, U.S.A 
qinh03@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn 
Abstract. The main characteristics of the computer game narrative are 
interactive and nonlinear, so this study proposes a questionnaire aim at studying 
player immersion in the computer game narrative. To evaluate the questionnaire, 
a survey was conducted on the Internet. After factor analysis and reliability test, 
an instrument for measuring player immersion were obtained. This instrument 
not only can be applied to the computer game narrative, it also ca be used to 
measure user experience in story-oriented virtual reality. 
1   Introduction 
Involvement in media such as novels, movies, computer games and virtual reality has 
been described as an experience of feeling deeply engaged with the medium. In the 
research of those fields, many terms have been developed to try to account for these 
experiences, such as flow, cognitive absorption (CA), presence and immersion 
[1,2,3,4,5]. These terms — flow, cognitive absorption, presence and immersion — 
have some overlap in studies, but in game research, immersion is a widely used term. 
In game worlds, players can see, hear and manipulate the environment, just as they do 
in the real world. This provides the player with a strong visceral and cognitive belief 
in what is experienced in the virtual context as physical reality. Ermi and Mäyrä [6] 
believed that immersion more clearly connotes the mental processes involved in the 
game. In addition, in the computer game industry, the term immersion is widely used 
[6,7,8]. Thus, the term immersion describing players totally submerged in their 
fictional surroundings is appropriate. Researchers consider immersion, like flow, to 
also be a multi-dimensional concept [2,6,7]. They attempt to interpret the depth or 
representation of the immersion in the field of the game. Table 1 summarizes the 
dimensions of engagement experience including flow, cognitive absorption, presence 
and immersion. 
For the computer game narrative, one of the characteristics that make it different 
from traditional narratives is interactivity. Interaction is a form of participating 
actively in the narrative. Therefore, gamers are not only the audience, but also players 
and narrators. They have intense subjective experience in listening, watching and 
acting. Another characteristic of the computer game narrative is its nonlinear structure. 
The relationship between independent events is causality, not a fixed sequence. These 
characteristics determine that players will have different experiences. 
  Commonly, general dimensions of engaging experience mainly include challenge, 
skill, time distortion, concentration, control and so on [3,7,9,10,13,15]. As for games, 
Table 1 Dimensions of engaging experience 
Author Engaging 
Experience
Application Dimensions 
Csikszentmihalyi  
[9] Flow 
Human 
psychology 
1. Focused concentration; 2. Merging 
of activity and awareness; 3. Perceived 
control; 4. Time distortion; 5 Loss of 
self-consciousness 
Hoffman & Novak 
[10] Flow 
A computer-
mediated 
environments
1. Consumer learning; 2. Perceived 
behavioral control (or confidence); 4. 
Exploratory behavior; 5. Positive 
subjective experiences; 6. Distortion in 
time perception 
Chou & Ting [11] Flow Online computer game 
1. Concentration; 2. Playfulness; 3.  
Distortion in time perception; 4. 
Telepresence; 5. Exploratory behavior 
Skadberg & 
Kimmel [12] Flow 
Browsing a 
website 
1. Enjoyment; 2. Lost track of time; 3. 
Telepresence 
Pace [13] Flow Web information seeking activities
1. Duration; 2. Frequency and intensity; 
3. Joy of discovery; 4. Reduced 
awareness of irrelevant factors; 5. 
Distorted sense of time; 6. Merging of 
action and awareness; 7. Sense of 
control; 8. Mental alertness; 9. 
Telepresence 
Sweetser and 
Wyeth [14] Flow 
Game player 
experience 
1. Concentration; 2. Challenge; 3. 
Skills; 4. Control; 5. Clear goals; 6. 
Feedback; 7. Immersion; 8. Social 
interaction 
Agarwal, 
Sambamarthy, and 
Stair [15] 
Cognitive 
absorption
Information 
technology 
1 Control; 2. Attention focus; 3. 
Curiosity; 4. Intrinsic interest; 5. 
Computer; 6. Playfulness; 7. Ease of 
use 
Agarwal and 
Karahanna [5] 
Cognitive 
absorption
Information 
technology 
1. Temporal dissociation; 2. Focused 
immersion; 3. Heightened enjoyment; 
4. Control; 5. Curiosity 
Witmer and Singer 
[3] 
Presence 
and 
immersion
Virtual 
environment
1. Presence: *Control; *Sensory; 
*Distraction; *Realism 
2. Immersion: *Tendency to become 
involved in activities; *Tendency to 
maintain focus on current activities; 
*Tendency to play video games 
Brooks [7] Immersion
Narrative in 
virtual reality 
and other 
interfaces 
1. Time; 2. Context; 3. Participation 
Brown and Cairns 
[2] Immersion Game 
1. Emotional involvement; 2. 
Transportation to different place; 3. 
Attention; 4. Control and autonomy 
Ermi and Mäyrä [6] Immersion Gameplay experience 
1. Sensory immersion; 2. Challenge-
based immersion; 3. Imaginary 
immersion 
some studies have also focused on these factors including concentration, playfulness, 
and control [6,11,14]. Because this study attempts to evaluate player immersion in the 
computer game narrative, the researchers consider that comprehending the structure 
and content of the story is a precondition of immersion. Only by understanding the 
content and structure of a series of events the players can make a plan or reason out a 
strategy for the next steps. Failure to comprehend the story may lead to failure to play 
[16]. Another aspect for studying player immersion in the computer game narrative is 
emotion. Therefore, a questionnaire for this study added items of story comprehension 
and emotion besides general dimensions of engaging experience. The questionnaire 
was composed of 30 items. In order to examine the reliability and validity of the 
questionnaire, a survey was conducted on a website. 
2   Measuring player immersion  
The whole procedure of the survey see figure 1. A questionnaire constructed of 30 
questions or items was conducted on a website. There were 340 participants and 309 
of respondents were effective. About 70% of the respondents were students. The ages 
of 93.85% of the subjects were from 20 to 30, and 95.47% had higher than 
undergraduate education levels. Only 36% of the participants had played games no 
more than 5 years. The participants supplied their personal information and brief 
information about their experience with computer games. Then the participants were 
asked to imagine a familiar game with a story frame to some degree while answering 
the 30 questions. The following steps were factor analysis including Exploratory 
Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to find and confirm 
the structural characteristics of the questionnaire. The aim is to obtain an optimal and 
simple model. The 309 data were divided into two parts for the two factor analyses. 
Then reliability and validity of the instrument were tested. The results showed that 
original questionnaire was constructed of six dimensions and the 30 items were 
changed into 18 items. The reliability test was also satisfactory. 
 
An Original
Questionnaire Factor Analysis Reliability Test
 
Fig. 1. The procedure of the survey 
3   Discussion  
The genres of computer games are diversiform and narratives differ in thousands of 
ways, so it is difficult to find a general measurement from the design aspects. 
However, most of computer games at present are story-oriented. This study 
considered that the degree of player immersion in the story could reflect the computer 
game narrative. Therefore, a questionnaire based on players’ perception, cognition, 
motion and emotion at the beginning of, in the course of and after playing the games 
were proposed to measure player immersion. 
At present, most studies only consider the computer game narrative as one aspect 
of computer games. There are nearly no systematical systems for measuring the game 
narrative. This study explores this field through empirical methods. The instrument 
proposed in this study provides a starting point for future theoretical research. 
References 
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questionnaire. Presence, Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 7(3), (1998) 225–240. 
4. McMahan, A.: Immersion, engagement, and presence: A method for analyzing 3-D video 
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Player immersion in the computer game narrative

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