In games, the quality of immersiveness is often lauded, though to my eye it was a close cousin of the once-in-vogue addictive, and I sought to define its inverse. Emersion is an antonym of immersion, thus, emersion was born [1]. Rather than a work which draws you into itself, an emersive work makes you more aware of your own life [2].

[1] the birthplace of emersion
[2] The Nature of Order p355
[3] Ugly Feelings p284

The quality of emersiveness is not an antonym to the more mainstream immersiveness, although I did for a long time consider them inconsolably opposite. That was a comfortable dichotomy, but a false one. Encountering the phrase "Which of the two makes me more aware of my own life?" (TNoO, 355) just now was a huge turning point, reconnecting this 'emersiveness' to Christopher Alexander's idea of "life". The initial desire to emerse (though at the time I used the word 'exmerse') was born of a desire for a work to draw focus to "the actual details of my experience and the real people around me".

This phrase can be captured very, very well by "life".