Immersion, Flow and Usability in video games

Context: Nowadays, video games look and feel increasingly realistic, and provide engaging and immersive experiences to players. Understanding what makes games so appealing and immersive is important to grasp in order to provide better experiences. Objectives: To provide a better understanding of the concepts of fow, immersion and usability in video games and understand how usability interact with these diferent concepts. Method: 20 participants took part in user tests and answered a survey about usability and immersion. Results: Usability had a positive efect on immersion which was fully mediated by appeal. Learnability was correlated with absorption by activity, and usability was correlated with fuency of performance. Conclusions: Usability and appeal are both contributing to the feeling of immersion which in turn increases the general appreciation of the game. Immersion and fow are both relevant to understand players' appreciation of the game.