Katherine Isbister starts the book relating the emotional experience players have of games to that of movie-goers or novel-readers. I found the pre-condition of this relation, the notion (provided within the opening quote by designer Will Wright of the ever popular sims) that it is assumed by the general public that games do not provide the strong emotional experience of these other mediums to be quite baffling. I’d even go as far to say that the feelings evoked in games have the potential to be much stronger than those of novels or movies, based on the principle quality of games which is the ability to choose, and that ability’s potential to have a meaningful outcome within the game. Readers and watchers are merely, in a vast majority of cases, observers. It is not to say that observation alone cannot produce immense bouts of emotion but rather that there is a certain “realness” of the immersion associated with games. It is much different to watch sports than it is to play them, for example. Perhaps you can claim to feel the rush of the win, the anxiety of a close call from behind the screen as you reach for your potato chips, but only those whose direct instantaneous choices determine the outcome of it every moment of the way can truly make claim to the feelings related to their actions. Besides Choices, Katherine highlights a second quality of games she calls “flow” in which she describes as an “optimal performance state” and likened to being in “the zone” in various activities. This is a state, she explained, where the world beyond the current task dissolves away, creating a very strong immersion into the game as it is the current task. However, I disagree with her statement that this is a quality unique to games, as I believe a very similar phenomenon occurs in other mediums, specifically the previously mentioned movies and novels, as one tunes out everything which is not the current state and focuses in on the specific task before them, even if that task is the simple one of following along.