#03

A short defence of Engagents

︎︎︎20.03.2024

When producing xR experiences I was often confused as to how I should define the individuals experiencing it. They are not just a Spectator or Visitor and they are more than a Participant surely? Though they aren’t always a Player, sometimes they are passive Observers other times they are active or even disruptive Learners. If you were building an immersive product, would you call them “Users”? That feels inhuman to me somehow, unfeeling. If I was making a piece of immersive theatre I may assign an audience specific characters or a role to help onboard them into the experience, something like Guests or Explorers.

There are so many names and descriptors for an audience of immersive media and so many producers trying to find the best single definition and everyone has a particular favourite likely according to their field, but we have yet to agree on a general descriptor.

Last year I read Mandy Rose’s summary of a round table discussion at IDFA about what to name the audience of immersive media and it reminded me of a term I developed during my Masters in xR during 2019. It may not be the perfect general term for xR audiences but I believe it’s a step in the right direction.

In her article, Mandy wrote about how media philosophers discussed what to call people who watched television eventually settling on ‘Viewers’. I would like to suggest we use the term “Engagents” as it follows a similar logic to the viewers of TV in that we should name our audience after what they are doing within immersive media, which is engaging with it. We could call our audience “Engagers” by that logic but I feel like we need a new word that encapsulates the more nuanced engagement an immersive audience experiences.

Engaging Agents ︎︎︎ Engagents

I had heard the descriptor ‘Agent’ for an immersive experience, particularly within VR experiences but felt this was too reductive, much like “User”, a default and bland term associated with the tech industry. However, Agent does infer the right kind of connotations like free will and intelligence. Agent is often used to describe NPCs or computer controlled entities within a program with a life of their own and free (with constraints) to make their own decisions. So our audience are intelligent, free willed people who can choose how they react to the immersive media, how they engage within it’s parameters. Whether passively or actively an audience member is ideally always engaging with what we immerse them in, otherwise the experience is not doing it’s job of being immersive. ‘Engaging’ infers a kind of momentum and activity, a presence. Engaging can also be an encompassing term for all the different states an individual may shift through while experiencing an immersive work. We can fold in all the other perceptions of how an audience may react within immersive systems or to a piece of xR media whether it be participant, visitor, player, observer or whatever, all hugged within the idea of ‘States of Engagement’.
It just so happens that “Engaging” and “Agent” roll off the tongue in similar ways and so can be combined into “Engagent” rather nicely.

Alternatively, we could call it ‘States of Play’ and have the term “Playgents”?

I’ve begun to adopt Engagents and having been using it quite a lot recently and I’m interested to hear what my collegues in the immersive maker space think about all this? What term do you prefer? Would you adopt Engagents? Let me know!

The above post is a draft version of what was eventually published on LinkedIn called “People experiencing xR - What should we call them?“

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Quote of the Week
“Sucking at something is the first step to being sort good at something” - Jake the Dog

Currently reading
The Gunslinger by Steven King

Listening to
Kiki Rockwell, Jungle, City & Color & Caravan Palace