Pervasive...or Immersive Gaming

Although the future of gaming on mobile phones presents this idea of pervasive gaming as springing up on you at any moment because of its wireless capabilities, I had a more autonomous idea of pervasive gaming that already exists (but still with the incorporation of mobile phones). We all know that World of Warcraft is incredibly time consuming. But this extends beyond the scope of leveling your character and gaining better weapons, etc. Keeping a continuous update on the game itself, including the progress of the game and the players within the game, serves to be a hefty time consumer as well.


So, perhaps you're about to enter an instance, and to get the most detailed outline of where specific bosses/drops are you go to wowhead.com. Or perhaps the newest patch has just come out and you're on Blizzard's site reading the updates and seeing what has particularly changed for your class/race. And of course there are the traditional fan culture mediums (generally online) that provide gamers with an opportunity to express their feelings towards the game through fan art, discussion, etc. But what is recently new to me (as I just got my iPhone) is the further extension of this "research" onto your mobile phone. There are countless World of Warcraft apps, of which I have "Characters" and "Chest". These two applications let you review character information and item information, respectively.


The extent to which a gamer is immersed in World of Warcraft far expands beyond the game itself. This, to me, is pervasive gaming. A game which requires so much attention that you turn to other media and other expressive outlets to further invest in the game. A game like Snake or Pac Man might be good momentary fun, and a game like Botfighters might indeed lurk up into your cell phone without your initiation, but games like World of Warcraft lure the gamer into the game to the point where it leaves them craving more information and more opportunities to expand their knowledge on the game. Pervasive in that gamers will exhaust countless resources in order to get the most up to date, reliable information on their game.