Digital Game Involvement

Calleja, G (2007) Digital Game Involvement: A Conceptual Model, Games and Culture 2(3), 236-260

In this article Calleja argues for the need to re-conceptualize game involvement normally represented through the metaphor of ‘immersion’ as a sort of uni-dimensional ‘mental’ (noetic) plunging into the virtual world. Involvement in game playing is physical in addition to mental, and also multifaceted rather than uni-dimentional. It involves several dimensions of game playing—strategic (engagement with all forms of decision-making within the game), performance (with all modes of avatar or game piece control in the digital environment), affective, sharing (with all aspects of interaction with other agents in the game world), narrative (with design-based and/or player-generated stories), and spatial (with a wider game area than what can be seen on the screen). These dimensions are experienced in a “complected fashion” with various degrees of intensity and fluid shifts in the relevance of one dimension over another. Game involvement is thus better represented in the metaphor of ‘incorporation’—“the subjective experience of inhabiting a virtual environment facilitated by the potential to act meaningfully within it while being present to others”(p. 257, my emphasis). ‘Incorporation’ is thus the result of “this fluid intermingling of players’ experiential intensities” and the notion attempts to account for the mental inhabiting of the virtual world as much as for our actual physical embodiment to and embodied interaction with others in that world through avatars. This re-conceptualization of the metaphor for gaming and online world experience —from ‘immersion’ to ‘incorporation’—also entails less of a separation between the virtual and immediate physical environment of the player.

Calleja adopts Goffman (1974) ’s notion of ‘frames’ through the work of Fine (1983) who redefines these ‘schemata of interpretation’ through which we organize and label experience as “worlds of meaning”, and establishes the above mentioned dimensions of involvement as “involvement frames”. He cautions us to remember that they are only described separately for heuristic purposes since in actuality they are never experienced in isolation but always in relation to each other, with some acquiring more relevance than others at certain stages of the involvement development. An important argument made against prior theoretical stances in game theory is that game activity (or ‘ergodicity’) should not be seen as a simple function of direct action or input by the player visible on the screen, potential and readiness to act are also crucial indicators, only perceivable from the multidimensional model of player involvement proposed here.

I very much like Calleja’s multicomponential and fluid or emergent perspective on involvement (which I closely associate with ‘motivation’). It seems much more useful than the classical intrinsic/extrinsic dichotomy. It allows for a very systemic perspective on what causes or encourages it. However, the multidimentionality of the matter also makes it very challenging to believe that as teachers and designers of learning experiences we can have any real control over it. And yet, game design theory—to which Calleja is contributing—as well as gaming experiences show that ensuring and enhancing involvement is possible, at least in the game. How different can leveraging involvement in L2 learning really be?