Yo, Spiff! Very much enjoyed reading this, and fully respect your ambition and vision in regard to the story. Know that everything this literary internet rando is about to say will be colored by that respect. It's too good not to give it a strong critique.
To write a ten-thousand-word story locked in a claustrophobic point-of-view with a near static geographical location is impressive. It's not easy to keep things rolling (pacing, gentlemen, pacing) when, in a very real sense, nothing is happening in the storyworld beyond one single character looking at screens. One of the struggles today's writers have is incorporating technology in a way that doesn't destroy the literary quality of a story. This is hard work, and you pulled it off. Near the end, I was surprised that I never wondered what was happening "outside" Hamilton's chair. Only good writing can make that limitation work.
By far the strongest parts of Immersification are where you describe the physical exertion and toll the (digital/virtual) competition takes on Hamilton, i.e. his actual immersification. Leaning into the precise biological language sells this well. And you don't overdo it with jargon. There's a great mix of medical terms and technical specs that allows a reader to very clearly "see" Hamilton's disintegration through every stage of the competition. It's vivid, it's gross, and matching the physical decline with his performance illustrates that paradox of physical/digital co-existence we are living with today. Yes, heart-health declines with excessive scrolling (kek).
Honestly, there's only one major conceptual misstep in the story: the competition itself.
Imagine you're an american teenage boy who has never heard of the Champions League. One day you are invited by a friend to watch a quarterfinal game between Atletico Madrid and AC Milan. The game starts, and you have absolutely no idea what's going on. You don't know the rules of the game. You don't know the players or the teams or any of their history. You don't even know the purpose of the competition. Try being that boy and wrapping your head around away-goal rules (when they existed), or offsides, or a yellow card vs a red card slide tackle, or why the keeper can't touch the ball with his hands if a defender passes back to him. That american teenage boy would be totally and utterly confused, and any enjoyment he had of the proceedings will be quite limited by his understanding of the game itself.
This is your situation when a reader picks up Immersification. You've dropped us into a game that is completely and utterly alien. Now, there is a nice little meta-parallel between Hamilton's immersification in the game and the reader's immersification in your fiction world. I like that. But that technique doesn't actually help the story here, it doesn't raise the stakes for us as readers, and it doesn't make Hamilton's actions more meaningful for us.
Simply put (and maybe I missed it) the story never tells us what Hamilton would even win as the champion of this competition, or why he wants to do it (beyond a vauge sense of accomplishment or jealousy). Does he win money? Recognition? A job? Celebrity? And how will that change his mental/emotional circumstances at the beginning? But since the story doesn't share this with us, we are left a little cold as to Hamilton's character and fate. Maybe that distance is what you wanted? After all, the story itself doesn't seem to like Hamilton all that much.
More broadly, the story never defines what the compeition is, how it runs/works, how it ends, etc. There is no name given to it, there are no rules explained, there is no overview of what the competition actually entails and even any kind of explanation about why it exists in the first place. I'm still at a loss as to what "wakescores" and "pulse scores" actually mean besides some vague performance metric. I'm at a loss as to the role of the judges in all this and how they determine outcome and how that matters vis a vis audience.
All of this vaugeness seems...off, especially considering your ability to get precise and specific with Hamilton's physical immersification. That is my biggest question which I'm sure you have an answer for: why the vagueness around the competition itself.
How can you explain some aspect of the game to us with being didactic or dumping exposition? It's hard. You approach that with the dialgoue between the announcers in some shorter sections. But these are the weakest parts of the story as they act mostly like summations, telling us stuff we already know or hinting at things we can already surmise. What if you turned these sections into some kind of "segments" or "interviews" like you see from American Football/Sky Sports pre-game shows? That way you can insert specific things about the competition (what it is called? who started it? who wins what? etc) without stopping the narrative cold.
I can see how the game itself is not as important as Hamilton's journey through it. This is the crux of your story, after all. It's not about the "game". It's about how Hamilton plays it. Still, by allowing us to understand the game itself more (like explaining to that teenage boy the rules of offsides and why the CL is the most important tournament in the sport) we are that much more invested in Hamilton's playing of it.
Now I read through the comments and you said that this story was inspired by hearing about people who watch others play video games. Brilliant. Love it. Awesome. But for me, that did not really come through clearly in the story itself. You have "immersed" us a little too deeply (at least this reader) and need to slightly pull back so we can get a wider shot of the unvierse you have created.
Copious thanks for this story, Spiff. Great to read and think about on a meandering Sunday.
Hey, thanks for reading it. And for your insights. All greatly appreciated.
I personally like the alienness as I was trying to imagine someone in 1970 watching a YouTube video of the guy watching someone else playing a video game. It would all seem totally bizarre and confusing. In that sense the rules of the video game would be less relevant.
That was the idea anyway. Far enough into the future it makes no sense to us. Why is Hamilton doing it? It seems crazy. He is sitting in a chair killing himself for what? Glory?
Definitely different, which is good for me as I like definitely different. As I'm a honest bunny I'll admit for a short while I wasn't sure I could get into it, more because unless someone is in a rocket deep in outer space, last man alive on the ship, the idea of concentrating on a lot of screens isn't my idea of fun but then it did what a good story should and got me involved in what he was doing. But then he died and it was surely a case for Hamilton of third time unlucky.
Shall be reading it again in a couple of days and be able to feel the storyline immediately. Great work.
I did notice how you brought in various subjects and it's very true if today that he would get to the number one position by putting up the kind of videos he did. It's exactly how they manipulate a wide section of the population today. Most people don't even stop to think about if what they're watching is true, they have become extremely gullible. I avoid it as much as possible simply because I don't wish to bang my head up a brick wall in despair at some of the propaganda and falsifications I've seen
One of my main rules in life is to question everything and I do mean everything.
Do you know what's kind of sad about your story, it was a scenario I could well imagine happening today, even including the lightly mentioned deaths because the game and winning became more important than life.
The idea was based on the idea some people online watch other people play computer games. I remember being shocked when I saw this. Not playing an immersive game, but watching some "champion" do so instead.
That gave me the idea. With everyone wanting to be a YouTube star it seemed apt for today. That we could elevate those who manipulate our mindless consumption then turn it into a "sport."
It worked for me, there again I'd seen briefly one of the big stadiums in America where they go to watch their favourite games player. The stadium was packed out and whatever amount on line watching live.
Big winnings in playing their games against each other via computer. So not so absurd after all!
Great story! Almost like a MetaVerse Hunger Games.
I'm glad you liked it. And I appreciate you reading it.
Wow! 👍👍
Glad you liked. Thanks for reading.
Yo, Spiff! Very much enjoyed reading this, and fully respect your ambition and vision in regard to the story. Know that everything this literary internet rando is about to say will be colored by that respect. It's too good not to give it a strong critique.
To write a ten-thousand-word story locked in a claustrophobic point-of-view with a near static geographical location is impressive. It's not easy to keep things rolling (pacing, gentlemen, pacing) when, in a very real sense, nothing is happening in the storyworld beyond one single character looking at screens. One of the struggles today's writers have is incorporating technology in a way that doesn't destroy the literary quality of a story. This is hard work, and you pulled it off. Near the end, I was surprised that I never wondered what was happening "outside" Hamilton's chair. Only good writing can make that limitation work.
By far the strongest parts of Immersification are where you describe the physical exertion and toll the (digital/virtual) competition takes on Hamilton, i.e. his actual immersification. Leaning into the precise biological language sells this well. And you don't overdo it with jargon. There's a great mix of medical terms and technical specs that allows a reader to very clearly "see" Hamilton's disintegration through every stage of the competition. It's vivid, it's gross, and matching the physical decline with his performance illustrates that paradox of physical/digital co-existence we are living with today. Yes, heart-health declines with excessive scrolling (kek).
Honestly, there's only one major conceptual misstep in the story: the competition itself.
Imagine you're an american teenage boy who has never heard of the Champions League. One day you are invited by a friend to watch a quarterfinal game between Atletico Madrid and AC Milan. The game starts, and you have absolutely no idea what's going on. You don't know the rules of the game. You don't know the players or the teams or any of their history. You don't even know the purpose of the competition. Try being that boy and wrapping your head around away-goal rules (when they existed), or offsides, or a yellow card vs a red card slide tackle, or why the keeper can't touch the ball with his hands if a defender passes back to him. That american teenage boy would be totally and utterly confused, and any enjoyment he had of the proceedings will be quite limited by his understanding of the game itself.
This is your situation when a reader picks up Immersification. You've dropped us into a game that is completely and utterly alien. Now, there is a nice little meta-parallel between Hamilton's immersification in the game and the reader's immersification in your fiction world. I like that. But that technique doesn't actually help the story here, it doesn't raise the stakes for us as readers, and it doesn't make Hamilton's actions more meaningful for us.
Simply put (and maybe I missed it) the story never tells us what Hamilton would even win as the champion of this competition, or why he wants to do it (beyond a vauge sense of accomplishment or jealousy). Does he win money? Recognition? A job? Celebrity? And how will that change his mental/emotional circumstances at the beginning? But since the story doesn't share this with us, we are left a little cold as to Hamilton's character and fate. Maybe that distance is what you wanted? After all, the story itself doesn't seem to like Hamilton all that much.
More broadly, the story never defines what the compeition is, how it runs/works, how it ends, etc. There is no name given to it, there are no rules explained, there is no overview of what the competition actually entails and even any kind of explanation about why it exists in the first place. I'm still at a loss as to what "wakescores" and "pulse scores" actually mean besides some vague performance metric. I'm at a loss as to the role of the judges in all this and how they determine outcome and how that matters vis a vis audience.
All of this vaugeness seems...off, especially considering your ability to get precise and specific with Hamilton's physical immersification. That is my biggest question which I'm sure you have an answer for: why the vagueness around the competition itself.
How can you explain some aspect of the game to us with being didactic or dumping exposition? It's hard. You approach that with the dialgoue between the announcers in some shorter sections. But these are the weakest parts of the story as they act mostly like summations, telling us stuff we already know or hinting at things we can already surmise. What if you turned these sections into some kind of "segments" or "interviews" like you see from American Football/Sky Sports pre-game shows? That way you can insert specific things about the competition (what it is called? who started it? who wins what? etc) without stopping the narrative cold.
I can see how the game itself is not as important as Hamilton's journey through it. This is the crux of your story, after all. It's not about the "game". It's about how Hamilton plays it. Still, by allowing us to understand the game itself more (like explaining to that teenage boy the rules of offsides and why the CL is the most important tournament in the sport) we are that much more invested in Hamilton's playing of it.
Now I read through the comments and you said that this story was inspired by hearing about people who watch others play video games. Brilliant. Love it. Awesome. But for me, that did not really come through clearly in the story itself. You have "immersed" us a little too deeply (at least this reader) and need to slightly pull back so we can get a wider shot of the unvierse you have created.
Copious thanks for this story, Spiff. Great to read and think about on a meandering Sunday.
Hey, thanks for reading it. And for your insights. All greatly appreciated.
I personally like the alienness as I was trying to imagine someone in 1970 watching a YouTube video of the guy watching someone else playing a video game. It would all seem totally bizarre and confusing. In that sense the rules of the video game would be less relevant.
That was the idea anyway. Far enough into the future it makes no sense to us. Why is Hamilton doing it? It seems crazy. He is sitting in a chair killing himself for what? Glory?
Again, thank for reading such a long short story.
Definitely different, which is good for me as I like definitely different. As I'm a honest bunny I'll admit for a short while I wasn't sure I could get into it, more because unless someone is in a rocket deep in outer space, last man alive on the ship, the idea of concentrating on a lot of screens isn't my idea of fun but then it did what a good story should and got me involved in what he was doing. But then he died and it was surely a case for Hamilton of third time unlucky.
Shall be reading it again in a couple of days and be able to feel the storyline immediately. Great work.
Thank you for this. And for reading it.
We live in a strange world. This is one reaction to that in a way.
I did notice how you brought in various subjects and it's very true if today that he would get to the number one position by putting up the kind of videos he did. It's exactly how they manipulate a wide section of the population today. Most people don't even stop to think about if what they're watching is true, they have become extremely gullible. I avoid it as much as possible simply because I don't wish to bang my head up a brick wall in despair at some of the propaganda and falsifications I've seen
One of my main rules in life is to question everything and I do mean everything.
Do you know what's kind of sad about your story, it was a scenario I could well imagine happening today, even including the lightly mentioned deaths because the game and winning became more important than life.
The idea was based on the idea some people online watch other people play computer games. I remember being shocked when I saw this. Not playing an immersive game, but watching some "champion" do so instead.
That gave me the idea. With everyone wanting to be a YouTube star it seemed apt for today. That we could elevate those who manipulate our mindless consumption then turn it into a "sport."
What can I say, I like the absurd.
It worked for me, there again I'd seen briefly one of the big stadiums in America where they go to watch their favourite games player. The stadium was packed out and whatever amount on line watching live.
Big winnings in playing their games against each other via computer. So not so absurd after all!
I understand peop l playing, especially for money. But wat hing others play seems odd to me.
I agree but paying money to go sit in a stadium to watch seems even odder to me.
I often say, sitting in chairs is the best way to become chair-shaped.
Words of wisdom.
😆😂