Many of the debates about immersion I’ve seen have aspects of this around them, if not central to them.

Between flow, groove, story, character sockets, etc., there is a way to read “getting to a mental space” and that being hard to talk about as “that space” is often different, and even similar spaces are often reached in different ways.

For me, this is certainly part of gaming – a state of focussed, connected flow. I have, in the past, tinkered with the idea that it’s one of the big gaps in play with many friends who I don’t RPG well with. They either want a different space or do not narrativize / alter as part of RPGs.

Which doesn’t mean we can’t play together, but it does make it tricky. And it makes talking about it just really fucking hard.