PERSPECTIVE
The Outer Limits
Journeys to the farthest reaches of interactive entertainment
ALEX SPENCER
Last month I laid out a theory – that videogames’ rise took an appetite for play that’s been part of our species since the very first knucklebone dice were rolled, then cracked it open, teaching us to look for it everywhere. I also promised that this time we’d turn our attention to what might be the greatest beneficiary of that effect. An entire medium that has effectively sprung from videogames’ side and multiplied with such leporine intensity that it’s become something of a dirty word: ‘Immersive’.
Most of the companies working in this space wince at that term nowadays, in much the same way we might have at its overuse in videogames a decade ago. The problem here, specifically, is the scattershot way it’s been applied, to everything from dinner theatre to Instagram-friendly art exhibitions and the Wonka Experience. But having grown up alongside videogames as their boundaries were still being drawn, for me this kind of fuzzy half-definition is part of the appeal – something I get to put to the test after a spot of calendarial mismanagement results in the most ‘immersive’ 24-hour period of my life.