Who are you?

My name is Aaron E. Freedman. I am a student and a lover of games, among other wonderful human experiences. I am currently a graduate student of Game Design at New York University.

What is Massively Immersive?

MI is a blog in the most basic sense of the word: a website on which I write stuff. I provide a more thorough elucidation below. However, for the convenience of the impatient:

TL;DR

Subject: Massively Immersive is about me inasmuch as my life involves games.

Think of it like a fledgling game designer’s journal. i.e. I write about school, people, game design, playing games, game design theory, and my failures (and, hopefully, successes) in all of the above.

Format: Mostly written.

Why? Because I enjoy writing. Sometimes posts are short, sometimes they are a wall of text, for I’m an essayist and storyteller at heart. Sometimes drawings and photos and videos, or whatever else I decide to include.

Frequency: However often I damn well please. (But, I try to stick to some semblance of an irregular schedule.)

And for those that want more background:

The Beginnings of Massively Immersive

MI began as a pet project during my fourth and final year of undergraduate studies when my thesis mentor suggested that I play around with blogging as a way to jump-start my writing processes. I chose the name Massively Immersive in reference to the broad genre of games that I most enjoy and the player experience that I expected my thesis to examine: Massively Multiplayer Games and immersion.

My first few months as a newborn blogger were reasonably content-rich. Yet, as my thesis picked up steam and quickly diverged from its original topic, my enthusiastic explorations and applications of game design theory, my philosophical musings, and my spontaneous works of criticism came less frequently. My blogging interests began to wander and I began posting arbitrary and completely unhelpful (unhelpful for myself, at the very least) posts. When my thesis was in its final stages, I stopped posting altogether.

In retrospect, I hoped to create a sustainable blog that revolved around a project that would conclude in one school year. Fortunately, though my original blogging motivation was unsustainable and the blog fell into disrepair, it had accomplished its purpose.

Massively Immersive Now

(Mid Summer, 2012 and onwards)

Since the original purpose of Massively Immersive is obsolete, I now have three primary motivations:

• To record my efforts toward making a career out of playing, making, and talking about games.
• To facilitate the start and completion of my various endeavors, as far as they relate to the above.
• To provide unique information to whoever reads MI.

To these ends, Massively Immersive is first and foremost a public, yet personal, journal. I write it with myself as my primary audience, but in the knowledge that it is publicly available.

MI is not a gaming newsblog. It is not a collection of funny GIFs. It is not a vain attempt to generate traffic to inflate my ego. (These three statements are mostly here so I may remind myself, lest I forget.)

And with that, I hope you find something you enjoy about MI. I greatly appreciate any feedback, comments, questions, or otherwise meaningful response that you feel inclined to provide.

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