Total Immersion: Lost in Time
Have you ever binged watched a whole series or finished a game’s story in one sitting? If so, you have probably experienced a lack of time awareness. Studies say that when things are good, time flies (Simen & Matell 2016). This subjective sense of time moving faster than that of time itself can be easily compared to the Mood Management Theory. This theory states that we expose ourselves to selective media content based upon our current mood. It also suggest that we select media that creates a relief from an unwanted feeling or mood. That we select content that is unexciting or relaxing when we feel stressed or anxious and vise versa, we seek exciting content when we are bored (Davis 2021).
This may be an unpopular opinion, but for the sake of this blog I will talk about my own experience.
There are over one million video games and of those my favorite would have to be Minecraft. This blocky mind numbing game has been my favorite when it first came out on the Xbox in 2012. This game has brought me joy and it is always my go-to game when I am either bored, stressed, or just in the mood to kill some time.
There is this point in which we enter the state of mood homeostasis. This means that we selectively chose a specific media to keep us at an optimal mood. Within the homeostasis, we could experience transportation or flow. For me, when I play Minecraft, I feel as if I enter both. Transportation refers to the state of immersion or getting lost in the game (Davis 2021). As for flow, it is an intense concentration in which our “internal clock” seems to run faster then time itself (Simen & Matell 2016). When we experience flow, our sense of time is distorted and we have a loss of self-awareness. As for me when I play Minecraft, I could spend hours upon hours getting “lost” in the game. Although I may lose myself within the game and possibly have an unhealthy addiction to it, but mood is always at an optimal level.
Resources
Warren Davis 2021 Lectures
Patrick Simen & Matthew Matell: Why does time seem to fly when we’re having fun? 2016
