My new book, The Age of Immersion: Make-Believe Worlds from Medieval Cathedrals to the Las Vegas Sphere, is out June 15, 2027, with Astra House!
I started researching the book three years ago after wondering why immersive experiences had exploded in popularity. Is “immersive” just a buzzword, a relabelling of existing forms – and if so, which ones? Is it a response to the loneliness epidemic and the rise of screens, or the inevitable result of new technology, as VR evangelists would have it? And how far back do their roots go?
If you’ve been following my writing, you’ll have previewed some of what I’ll be covering. My interest in Nordic larp began when I realised I simply couldn’t write about larp without experiencing it, and once I did, I couldn’t help but cover it here. The Sphere, jubensha, and escape rooms like The Ladder will also make it in, so if you liked those posts, you’ll absolutely enjoy the book.
But there’s an awful lot more to it than that. Only a third of The Age of Immersion is about work in the 21st century, which means most of the book is dedicated to the thousand years preceding it, from pageants and panoramas to human exhibitions and theme parks. I trace how medieval tournaments transformed from massive melees that resemble modern extraction shooters to spectacular, choreographed immersive theatre, and illustrate how the 20th century avant-garde were asking the exact same questions about audience consent and coercion that we’re asking today. I don’t think there is any good way to understand what’s happening now without that deep historical context.
It’s a lot. Partly, it’s a synthesis of scholarly literature, particularly of newer work that’s reinterpreting historical art and entertainment in light of modern understandings of role play. Where earlier books once imagined tournaments more like sports or theatre, newer studies find closer comparisons to role-playing games. But because the book goes right up to the present day, it also reflects my own personal experience of immersive art – and I’m not sure any other author has seen quite the breadth I have. There’s even a fun moment when my path as an ARG designer crossed with that of Felix Barrett from Punchdrunk!
All that history builds up to those first questions: why “immersive”, and why now? And I do have answers, but they aren’t exactly the ones you’ve heard elsewhere…
I’m beyond delighted with the book’s cover, designed by Rob Farmer. I love how its shimmering, pixellated version of the Water Lilies evokes the timeless nature of immersion. After all, Monet was the OG “immersive” artist.
(In that respect, it’s already well ahead of my last book, You’ve Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All. Even though the book is a critique of gamification, the word doesn’t appear in the title at all; even The New York Times wasn’t as shy in its review! And the cover was not great. I should’ve pushed back but I wrongly assumed my publisher knew best.)
There’ll be much more time for me to plug The Age of Immersion here and elsewhere. For now, if you’re intrigued, please tell your friends and pre-order it from your local store – it helps a lot!
At the moment it’s only available in North America, but as soon as that changes, I’ll let people know…
