On Matthijs Holter’s article in Lifelike:
Holter argues that we (the writers, students and - ) should stop talking about immersion. He admits that there is something called ‘immersion’, but that it isn’t constructive to use immersion as a term in writing about role-playing games and theory of role-play. I disagree and this is why:
In biology and other bio-sciences the term ‘gene’ is widely used, although the object of the term is vague. When you look at literature in bio-sciences ‘gene’ has a variety of uses: in genetics it usually signifies the phenotype the gene is part of generating - e.g. you have genes for blue eyes. But strictly speaking that is not what a gene is. There is no gene for blue eyes, there is a gene that participates in generating the RNA that determines whether eyes receive the color for brown. If the gene is not activated, you have blue eyes instead.
I’m not a student of biology, so the comparison may not be very accurate, but the point I am making hopefully is: like gene, immersion may be a vague term. But that is not exceptional in any way: terms live and change all the time in science. That doesn’t mean that they can’t or shouldn’t be used. It just means that you need to make sure that your use of the term isn’t ambiguous or unclear and that your use of the word suits the audience.