eSports and Performance Enhancement

Watching to win: when watching others play improves performance

written by Hannah, former student at PCRS based on her thesis in 2024

The aim of this research was to investigate whether observing an individual play a video game improves one’s gaming performance. This was achieved by conducting two studies with a clone of a game called Super Hexagon.

In the first study, participants were put into pairs, with one participant acting as the observer and the other as the player with the objective of examining whether observational learning enhances gaming performance. The second study was an online study in which participants played the game with or without observing a recorded video. In addition to observational learning, the significance of sequence learning was investigated. Participants who were given the video, either saw it in the same sequence as that they played in or in a random sequence.

Key findings:

Observational learning improved performance, both in live observations and in the context of pre-recoded videos. The first study also suggests that social dynamics influence the learning process. The second study also showed that the observational learning is more effective when the content aligns with the anticipated challenge. However, while observations can increase performance, it is important to emphasise that practice remains an important factor in the refinement of skills.

Implications:

The studies provide new insights into the effect of observational learning within the context of gaming. The findings of this study also suggests that a combination of active practice and observational learning might be more effective in increasing gaming performance compared to active practice alone. In addition, the findings suggest that game designers should include more opportunities to observe what other players are doing and that these should match the challenges that gamers are facing. Thus, these studies demonstrate the efficacy of observational learning in enhancing performance in the context of digital gaming.

Electrify your brain to enhance your game?

_{by Max based on student work by Gina and Nick at PCRS in 2024}

In this study we investigate the effect of non-invasive brain stimulation (specifically transcranial direct current stimulation) on performance in a clone of a game called SuperHexagon. 

Participants were seated in front of a PC screen in the BMS Lab and wired up with the brain stimulation divice before they started playing the game. 

In each session, a participant’s visuospatial working memory performance in a gaming setting was measured twice. We did find no effect of any type of transcranial direct current stimulation (regardless of timing or polarity) on performance. Nevertheless these results contribute to the understanding under which conditions cognitive enhancement may be viable in practice (e.g., to enhance learning, e-sports performance, or driving).

You can also watch them talk about their study here 

Feel the stop: does a buzzing controller improve performance or not?

written by Max, based on student work by Nikola and Miruna in 2023

Knowing when to stop is just as important as knowing when to go — whether you're dodging an attack mid-combo or holding fire because a teammate just ran into your line of sight. In this study we asked a very concrete question: which "stop signal" gets players to abort an already-initiated action fastest — a sound, a vibration in the controller, or both together? And does dressing the task up as an actual mini-game (rather than a bare-bones lab task) change how well people perform, or how motivated and immersed they feel?

Key findings: Haptic stop-signals won, clearly. Whether alone or combined with sound, vibration through the controller let players stop their actions roughly 100 milliseconds faster than sound alone — a big effect. Adding sound on top of the vibration gave no extra benefit. Surprisingly, though, the gamified version was actually a bit slower to react in than the plain version, likely because the extra visual detail (an avatar, a forest, a fairy) demands more processing. On the experience side, players reported feeling more motivated and interested in the gamified version — but, oddly, a deeper sense of flow in the arguably boring, basic version, the opposite of what earlier studies with a similar game found.

Implications: For game and controller designers, this is a nice concrete result — if you need players to react to a "stop" cue fast (an incoming attack, a warning, a friendly-fire alert), put it in their hands via haptic feedback rather than (or in addition to) a sound cue. More broadly, the fact that a "prettier" game slowed people down, and that motivation and flow didn't move together, is a useful reminder that gamifying a task for the sake of engagement isn't free: it can trade off against raw performance, and "more fun" doesn't automatically mean "more absorbed."

For more information see: Markiewicz, N., Russa, M., Fokkens, A., Dechant, M., & Friehs, M. A. (2024). You got it in your hands: Stop-signal modality influences on reactive response inhibition with gaming controls. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction, 40(24), 8525-8534. but also Friehs, M. A., Schmalbrock, P., Merz, S., Dechant, M., Hartwigsen, G., & Frings, C. (2024). A touching advantage: cross-modal stop-signals improve reactive response inhibition. Experimental Brain Research, 242(3), 599-618.