Board game immersion

Abstract

This chapter explores the nature of immersion, both as a concept and an experience and considers the applicability of this phenomenon to board games. Through the chapter I will be challenging the application of the term immersion to all forms of engaging experience, as is often the case in the literature on digital games, and more recently, board games, to argue that we need to reserve the term to refer to the more specific experience of game world habitation. This chapter ends with a consideration of the key aspects of board game immersion that lead to a pro-posed definition of the phenomenon that is both clear and specific to the experience in question.