My Optimal Immersion Environment.

Sitting at work attempting to pick an interesting topic to discuss out of thin air and having no luck suddenly aided in surfacing a memory which is particularly poignant alongside this weeks reading and lecture material.
I shall not disclose where I work and how important utilizing the utmost of concentration in my job actually is for what you’re about to read could possibly double as a confession as to why I should be fired.

When I discovered that my laptop was not as retro as I once believed, and that it could actually handle playing The Sims 3, I took it into work in order to play during down time – a substitution for the usual chapter reading or movie watching I usually enjoyed. Unfortunately, it seems that my immersion into this game was much more prevalent than I initially expected. Firstly, I realized that I was answering incoming calls at a rate significantly slower than I usually do, and even then it was with slight frustration that I tore my eyes away from the screen of my laptop to the screen of my desktop to answer a call that seemed puzzling at first. It only took seconds to get back into the correct mindset for a particularly urgent request, but this is more time than I’m used to when not preoccupied with something prior to such calls being received. Most startlingly however was this notion I felt that my job had interrupted my playing time – surely this is meant to be the other way round!

Later, when I was on a particularly lengthy call with someone whose babbling was not of great value to me I found my eyes gravitating towards my laptop and wondering just how Candy the gold-digger was going to plan her day and whether it would be spent with her husband or one of the other men in the neighbourhood. (This is but one of my Sims I played for a brief period, and unlike Second Life she is not the embodiment of a life I feel I have missed out on, just to clarify).
When Kevin discussed people preparing themselves for immersion when it comes to games and films (the drawing of curtains, the shutting of doors, the prime position viewing etc) I did not really think about the fact that for me, the shear escapist nature of The Sims 3 means that I am most immersed in the office with phones blaring and things needing done. When I'm at home with nothing else to do and the game becomes a time filler between two nothing's I do not feel as immersed in a life simulator as I do when the game is a time filler between two required tasks in my job, am I an anomaly?

I find it particularly ironic that this weeks readings on the extension of the human-machine relationship and it's separation into work apparatus and leisure activity are both addressed in a seemingly run of the mill 8 hour shift.

Needless to say, I no longer bring any form of video game into work, especially over the New Year and its succeeding weeks where everything is much busier.
I just type out a blog instead (which surprisingly I do not find immersion worthy in the least).

Ben Walton