Done Here

Ok, I like the whole WordPress thing, so I'm taking my show over there. Maybe I'll try to bring some of this stuff over there, maybe not. I'm lazy and I do so like the idea of a 'fresh start.'

Complexity and Type

Most of my typological reflections are rooted directly in Carl Jung's discussion of type even though I have made free use of the MBTI shorthand. I finally decided I ought to look a little more closely at the MBTI discussions proper, and realized I had developed a way of framing it in opposition to it. My typology works according to triangulation and developed in close proximity to my own self-reflection and on reflections about my wife. MBTI developed with the explicit assumption that your inferior function is always the opposite of your dominant function.

But what I am almost 100% sure about is that this picture is wrong, that the structure presumed by the MBTI is not necessarily the case. I am sure that it described some people, that it accurately captures one possible set of relations. However, I am also sure that it is not the only way in which these functions can develop.

June Singer, in Boundaries of the Soul, talks about how she felt typology stymied rather than facilitated her analysis--that, despite being a 'Thinker' she had a robust Feeling function. This doesn't make sense in the standard MBTI structure, we would have to say that if she does have a strong Feeling function, she cannot be a Thinker. My model does not require this--instead, you get a primary function which may develop through its auxiliary function into one of two distinct styles. In the standard situation, the person develops in the standard Dyadic fashion. However, there is another option--in which the person develops their 'contrary' function by way of their of auxiliary, allowing it to serve as a messenger between the two.

Which all goes to question the validity of the MBTI questionnaire, requiring that most typing properly belongs to an analytic-personal encounter, where the individual's life history is discussed and not reduced to a battery of yes/no, maye so questions.

And, yes, this is a bit outside the scope of what I usually post here. Since it did emerge from this discussion, it feels right, though.

Immersion Pie

So I reflected about all this typology stuff and how it related to immersion, then I put it on the back burner to let it stew for a while. Here are the results.

There is a diagram that I have in my head that I can’t easily translate into words. It’s a pie chart that gets divided in four ways, one slice for each function (N, F, S, T). Now, these functions can overlap and often express themselves in another four-way division of the circle (NF, NT, ST, SF). Each way of slicing the pie has a style of immersion associated with it and a set of techniques that facilitate it. The more blended the individual’s faculties, the more their immersion is described by one of NF, NT, etc. cuts. The more the individual’s immersion depends on a single function, the more it is described by the N, F, etc. cuts. A single person may have multiple immersion styles.

Below, I go into a brief description of each style. I hope to develop an extended discussion of each in the future, focusing on techniques that may enhance their particular brand of immersion.

Hypothesis: opposing functions / function pairings produce contrary immersion styles. Engaging in one tends to obscure engaging in the opposing style. Each immersion style may provide a degree of ‘interference’ to other immersion styles. So, we move from interference to outright opposition as we move around the circle. This hypothesis is not settled and its accuracy does not impact the descriptions that follow, but has the potential to amplify it.

The Two Models

(Single Function)

N immersion (“Let me Imagine”): An N gamer needs to have the space to imagine the game as it unfolds. This is an internal process, one that requires they have time to ‘process’ their experience in the game into speculation and fantasy.

F immersion (“Let Me Feel”): An F gamer needs to have a game that allows them to invest emotionally in the world, their fellow players, and the NPC’s that populate the world. Those investments need to feed directly into the game itself.

S immersion (“Make Me See”): An S gamer needs a thickly imagined world, one with sights and sounds, textures and flavors. When they examine an object more closely, that object needs to become more particular.

T immersion (“Make Me Reason”): A T gamer needs a game that they can explore conceptually. The world needs to seem rational, well-ordered, and provide puzzle-like challenges that they can solve through the application of logic. Most often, the complexity of an rpg system attracts these players, leading them to approach the game primarily as a rules system to be exploited.

(Dual Function)

NF immersion (“Inspire Me”): An NF gamer needs a game that helps them experience new emotions, intense emotions. They enjoy a game that lets them play characters that embody affective states, characters whose affections border on the spiritual. The state itself, sometimes more so than the event that initiates it, becomes primary.

NT immersion (“Let Me Figure Out the Rules”): An NT gamer sees the game as the application of a series of rules, the complexity emerging from their intersection. They have the most fun parsing out these intersections and learning how to manipulate them to their benefit.

ST immersion (“Let Me Work the Levers”): An ST gamer, like the NT gamer, sees the game as an application of rules. However, for them, the rules are less abstract, more concrete. They enjoy puzzles with clear solutions, combat challenges that require them to think tactically, with a concrete number of units and positions involved.

SF immersion (“Put Me in the Picture”): An SF gamer, like an NF gamer, needs a game that helps them experience strong emotions. Unlike the NF, though, they prefer visceral emotions firmly rooted to the particular events of the game. Whereas an NF’s emotions and behavior borders on the symbolic, the SF prefers visceral emotion. They dwell upon the details of the experience—-the crunch of the troll’s bones, the princess’ chaste kiss, and so on.

I can’t help myself from thinking about how a game like D&D looks through this lens. The settings tend to be very SF and NF with their sweeping conflicts and colorful backdrop, but play tends to favor NT and ST. It is NT to the extent that the progression and development of a character over the course of a game is a rules-driven process, one that favors someone who enjoys working through those rules and finding optimizing combinations. It is ST to the extent that a standard module focuses on tactical level combat and puzzles with well-defined solutions.

A standard module definitely throws a sop to the SF player with its gray box of descriptive text which allows a player to situate their character. But it doesn’t do much more than that since the ‘real’ information ends up being tactical and rules driven. The NF player most often has to struggle along, finding investment where they can. Frequently, the sort of investments they desire are only gestured to in a standard module—-simple hooks to draw the players in but which remain behind the scenes.

I suspect a lot of mainstream games follow this pattern-—they appeal to a lot of SF / NF players in terms of their presentation, but frequently favor NT / ST players in practice. SF / NF players are more likely to get more freeform almost by necessity.

Intuitive (N) Immersion Styles?

So I have been talking to Thomas Robertson a bit about immersion. It's been very productive (for me, at least) since it helps me start to track the differences between things that fall under the large umbrella term of 'immersion.' It has also given me more fuel to hammer out this typology binge I'm on. Over at his blog, I looked at what he described as immersing in chess and thought that I might call it a 'T' immersion. He countered that the F comes in for him during roleplaying sessions in which the same style of immersion occurred.

And, very interesting indeed, he noted that some of that affect occurred after the fact, as he thought through the game. Some of this comes under the 'oh, so that's why Bob [my character] did that! Because he was angry at the princess and wanted to punish her for shaming him.' When I spoke to him, he emphasized that dimension again--namely, that he thinks (at least some forms of) immersion depend upon this after-the-fact reflection to support them. The more I think about that, the more I think he is really onto something.

I erred in calling the experience he discussed 'T'--pretty clearly, because it does involve F in its roleplaying incarnation. Which makes me think that what we are really looking at is an 'N' immersion, one driven by a certain receptiveness to the 'scene' in which the immersion occurs, where the response is not thought through but neither is it random. The processing seems to be going on behind the scenes of his 'conscious' mind, so what he does is just let that process keep going, let it dictate what actions he takes. This necessarily involves some application of learned patterns, but as he rightly points out most people can access behavioral patterns in this way simply because they have lived with people all their lives. Something very close to or identical to schema.

So, at least as he describes it, we have both an NT immersion (chess) and an NF immersion (roleplaying). This matches nicely with what Jung says about how N-dominated activity: it tends to 'see' symbols in place of emotions, even when they are feeling them. This helps get at why the after-the-fact reflection is important--the N experience requires that the person 'unearth' the feeling beneath the experience, give it both reason and voice, in order for it to take on a new layer of substantiality. I suspect (and I think this may be one of the things Thomas was getting at) that this new substantiality also feeds forward, making the player feel more invested in the next session, allowing the player to 'trust' their intuition more.

Now this sort of immersion does not demand that the player 'feel' their character or get involved in any 'trance' state, although it is possible that someone who works with trance states might be well-suited to accessing that intuitive level quickly (a crossover skill). The deep immersion in which a player feels like they are 'channeling' their character is still an NF experience, but one in which the emphasis rests on the F rather than on the N. That sort of play will be less suited to switching out to rules discussions, to carrying on side discussions during play, and so on, because they need to 'get into the character' and those things force them to 'get out of character.' Same motorcycle, but a lot depends on which faculty is driving and which one gets the sidecar. For shorthand, I'll bold and italicize the primary function in a pairing. NF would thus be N with an F in the sidecar.

This tickles me to no end--it reveals a great deal of subtlety in the typological approach and starts to point out ways in which the approach can assist players. Clearly, someone who is playing in a NF mode can work well with someone in an NF mode as long as they know not to drop in and out of the scene too quickly. Similarly an NF can support an NF's play by their intensity so long as they don't demand that they share that intensity, as long as they appreciate that there is a seriousness behind the NF's coolness.