Abstract
One of the most pleasurable aspects of video games is their ability to induce immersive experiences. However, there appears to be a tentative conceptualization of what an immersive experience is. In this short review, we specifically focus on the terms of flow and immersion, as they are the most widely used and applied definitions in the video game literature, whilst their differences remain disputable. We critically review the concepts separately and proceed with a comparison on their proposed differences. We conclude that immersion and flow do not substantially differ in current studies and that more evidence is needed to justify their separation.
Highlights
Video games offer highly positive experiences and it has been argued that the experience of flow alone may be responsible for the positive emotions during video game playing (Hoffman and Novak, 1996; Quinn, 2005; Guo et al, 2012; Nah et al, 2014)
This focused review briefly addressed some conceptual challenges in the literature of flow vs. immersion and their related concept of presence in video gaming
Our aim was to challenge the dominant view that flow is different from immersion
Summary
Video games offer highly positive experiences and it has been argued that the experience of flow alone may be responsible for the positive emotions during video game playing (Hoffman and Novak, 1996; Quinn, 2005; Guo et al, 2012; Nah et al, 2014). Immersive experiences during video game playing are still predominantly measured with questionnaires (Procci and Bowers, 2011; Lee et al, 2014; Bian et al, 2016). These tools often present variability on the definitional premise upon which they were structured, and raise ambiguity over the validity of what they claim to be capturing. This short review examines the main differences that have been outlined for flow and immersion and argues that these states might be the same
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