Thank you for your response, CFM!
I certainly will agree on those notions; it's kind of a complete experience, when playing one of these great immersive games like the Baldur's Gate Saga. It confronts your senses, as well as being a cognitive and emotional experience as well.
As such, it has a certain place in your memory, you're perhaps faced with "intellectual" challenges (for example some of the puzzles, language learning, and such) and there's some emotional situations to face as well (the empathy experience described in a post above, the romances etc.)
I also agree on the thought, that being a protagonist (having the role of one such) gives a sense of accomplishment; you have a goal, you have ambitions, and you're apparently willing to spend a great many hours to reach those goals and ambitions.
As mentioned, it's somewhat of a complete experience. To be sure, not all games can accomplish this - most of those I've played through do not; at least not to the extend of the Baldur's Gate series (or mayhap, Planescape: Torment).
It's perhaps somewhat the same thing with great works of art, whether it be books, a painting, a composition, or maybe a movie; it's a sort of multidimensional experience. The difference between these things and videogames, is perhaps, that you're having a much more active part in the story...unless, of course, you're actually a musician, a filmaker, or whatever, yourself!
Still, despite all these things we can mention to explain our experiences, I still retain that there's something that remains very hard to explain; the so called "magic" of the game, the "feel", or whatever you would call it. There's just so many factors to include, I think.
I'm sometimes guilty in making these sort of "exercises" of explaining my experiences, in this case a videogame. It's not an attempt, by any means, to reduce my experience to these factors. I actually enjoy, that there's some elements that remains a mystery to me.
Neverthess, I constantly, strangely enough, seem to reach out to that same mystery...
Anyway, I'm tired, and starting to ramble a bit here, I think.
Again, thank you for the response!
- Anara