--- title: "Memory and its effect on game immersion" subtitle: "I remember" author: Seth publish_date: 2025-07-20 00:01 date: 2025-07-20 00:01 hero_classes: text-light title-h1h2 overlay-dark-gradient hero-large parallax hero_image: round-clock-in-a-city-1600x800.jpg show_sidebar: true show_breadcrumbs: true show_pagination: true taxonomy: category: blog tag: [gaming, meta, rpg, wargame] --- As obvious as it may seem, when I play a tabletop game with a roleplaying element to it, I never lose sight of where I am. I'm always aware that I'm sat at a table, manipulating game tokens or character sheets, flipping through pages of rules, rolling dice, and so on. After the game is over, and I'm thinking about what happened, I never remember the game as me sitting at a table rolling dice. Instead, I think about the events from the perspective of inside the game. I "remember" most major events from the game world as if they'd happened to me, or as if I'd physically witnessed them. It makes me wonder how much of roleplay actually happens during the act of playing a game, and how much of it happens in retrospect. The term "roleplay" is classically [difficult to define](https://mixedsignals.ml/games/blog/game_flexible-definition-of-roleplay). For some players, it's _role play_ to take a character build option that's likely to never be useful in game but that accurately reflects the character's life experience. For some players, it's _role play_ to feel the emotions of your character while speaking with an NPC or another player character. For some players, it's _role play_ to explain gameplay decisions from the perspective of your character. For some players, it's _role play_ to play as any character that must make decisions during the game, or to play any game that isn't just a puzzle or chess. Roleplay can be many things, and I don't think it all has to result in vivid memories that trick you into believing you actually descended into a dungeon to fight a dragon. ## Imaginary states of unreality However, I do think that sometimes roleplay does result in memories that not only recall but also add to how you experienced the act of playing an imaginary role. I played a solo game once where my hand was forced toward a specific tactic, and in my memory of that game I always feel a deep sense of resignation. I internally "shake my head" and think phrases like "I had no choice" and "It was the best I could have done under those circumstances" and so on. I legitimately feel a sense of responsibility for the troops I lost during that game, and I console myself with the knowledge that ultimately the objective was achieved. But of course all that actually happened, in real life, was that I moved plastic soldiers from one side of the table to the other. No lives were lost, there was never any threat of danger. I didn't even have to follow the rules. I could have just declared that a giant hand reaches down from the sky to place the soldiers where I wanted them to be on the table. It was a game, and nothing was at stake. The struggle was that I had a declared a desired state of imagination, and then constrained the conditions permitting me to achieve that state. Had you witnessed that particular solo game, you probably wouldn't say I had done much role play. My soldiers didn't hold conversations out loud or in my head, I hadn't given any of them names, I mostly just followed rules and moved tokens. But every step of the way, I was emotionally invested in the success of my little team. I wanted my soldiers to survive, and I wanted my playable team to win. But that didn't feel like roleplay to me. It felt like emotions, which can be part of roleplay. In my memory of the game, those emotions linger. The reasons those emotions exist at all is because they were, whether it felt like it or not, a component of roleplaying. ## Why a bad game breaks immersion Interestingly, memories of a particularly bad game rarely feels like roleplay. A game might be bad because of the rules, or the fact that I don't know the rules yet, or because I'm playing with people I don't like (which I avoid, but sometimes I don't know it until later). For those games, my memories tend to be about what didn't work, and the frustration of trying to make a game happen and failing. There's little room for roleplay, maybe because the act of playing the game was not sufficiently subliminal. I don't think game mechanics need to be entirely invisible for roleplay memories to successfully coalesce. I'm constantly looking up rules during **Pathfinder 2** and **Warhammer 40,000** games, I'm always looking up spells in my **Tales of the Valiant** game, but all of those have produced vivid memories of roleplay. Admittedly, in those games the rules feel like part of the gameplay to me. I have a strong association between roleplaying games and rulebooks. I love it when a game is forced to pause for rules references or debate. That's part of the experience, for me. Those moments lead to fun roleplay, but they aren't the subject of roleplay memories themselves. During a bad game, even the act of referencing rules takes a back seat to not comprehending the rules, or arguing with a problem player or opponent over the meaning of a rule, or not even getting to play the game due to personality conflict. In a bad game, even the meta game is subverted by external forces of reality, leaving little or no room for roleplay and immersion. ## Memories as roleplay I don't know how common it is for people to lose themselves in roleplay in the moment of gameplay. I don't think it's uncommon for people to remember the story of a game as a lived event. Roleplay can be — and, maybe more often than not, is — a phenomenon that occurs retroactively, or at least in part retroactively.