The world of virtual multiplayer gaming provides one of the most researched contexts for immersive experience so perhaps the question for our enquiry is to what extent can the concepts developed for this context be extended to real world immersive situations?
In a grounded investigation of immersion in gaming, 
Brown and Cairns (2004).pdf recognise immersion as ‘an important experience of interaction’ and a term that is used to describe ‘the degree of involvement with a game’. Three levels of involvement were identified – engagement; engrossment and total immersion and gamers progression through the sequence is determined by the complexity, challenge and quality of the experience. To enter the immersion sequence gamers must invest time, effort and attention.
Total immersion involves participants becoming so engrossed that the game is all that matters. Attention is an important part of immersion and the level of immersion felt by gamers seems to correlate to the number of attentional sources needed as well as the amount of each attention type. Intense engagement often leads to heightened sense of awareness and acts of embodiment.
Laura Ermi and Frans Mayra describe a heuristic gameplay experience model with a particular focus on immersion, based on an analysis of the behaviours of game-playing childred. The model includes three components: sensory, challenge-based and imaginative immersion.
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