How responsiveness affects players' perception in digital games

Abstract

Digital games with realistic virtual characters have become very popular. The ability for players to promptly control their character is a crucial feature of these types of games, be it platform games, first-person shooters, or role-playing games. Delays in the responsiveness of a player's character, for example due to extensive AI calculations or to network latencies, can considerably reduce the player's enjoyment of a game. In this paper, we present a thorough analysis of the consequences of such delays on the players' experience across two games with different levels of difficulty. We investigate the effects of responsiveness on the player's experience, performance, and perception of the virtual character, as well as the player's adaptability to delays. We find that delay affects the enjoyment of the games as well as the performance, but only becomes really important when a game becomes more challenging. Furthermore, players can get used to delay within a few minutes of play, so that their performance does not significantly differ from players without a delay handicap.