Immersion

"Immersion" (like "Role Playing Game") is another term that has been flogged to death by video game critics and developers.  This term refers to the user's experience of playing: it means that the user is "totally engrossed" in the medium or experience.

In sports like swimming, this is a given.  In a video game, the term is much more floppy (even for the mighty Virtua Boy).

Take Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero, for instance.  A particularly challenging level might allow me to do a great "run" of steps or notes, taking me to the limits of my ability to read and react at the same time.  This challenge short circuits my brain's ability to process the step between seeing and doing.  When I skip the cognitive phase entirely, I experience an odd heightened awareness.

Some users may report tunnel vision, time shortening or lengthening, or other strange mental phenomena.

Still, it's an accident of design.  The game Dance Dance Revolution is not "immersive".  It merely presents the user with ever increasing difficulties.  When the user finds the right challenge, immersion is a probable circumstance.  The human and the machine are intended to enter a dialog.  If this feedback loop occurs faster than the human can process, the loop breaks.  If it is too slow, the human is bored.  Either case prevents "immersion".  A sophisticated game design attempts tune this interaction.

Flow allows the user to try to create this balance manually by opting into higher difficulty levels.
Left 4 Dead's AI director dynamically adjusts dramatic moments, pacing and difficulty.
Tony Hawk games have a increases difficulty as a trick is maintained.
Games like Go and League of Legends use complex player matching algorithms to match opponents.

All of the above facilitate immersion, but they do not "have" or "create" immersion and they all use very different mechanics to create very different effects.

My plea is that game designers and critics focus on methods and mechanics that a game uses to facilitate an engaging feedback loop rather that labeling a game as "immersive".

Next Term:  Risk-Reward.

Role Playing Games

Role Playing Game:  It's a term that has been literally flogged to death by the last generation of game development.

I have no problem with it's application when used in a tabletop RPG.  Traditionally, this medium has the ability to have the player's choices affect the world in a meaningful way.  Video games typically must define stories ahead of time, rather than adjusting on-the-fly like an RPG premade module.  Video games lack a present-tense adjudicator however and they have difficulty interacting with a dynamic player.  They must limit interactions or buckle under the pressure of handling every contingency.

A good dungeon master can handle a shifting plot-line.

In videogames, the term RPG has come to mean a game with advancing statistics, but this is only one common point that these games have in common with older games like DnD which actually focus on role playing.

Furthermore, statistic advancement has bled into every genre of video-game. This term is now so diluted that it doesn't really mean anything anymore.  My take, the RPG designation should revert back to a tabletop term until videogames can catch up to a real life DM in ability to adjudicate autonomous decision making.