The effects of ambient motion speed on player performance in video games

With the advancements in computer graphics, moving objects and animations have been widely applied to several interactive software including productive tools and video games. Examples of moving objects in games are movement of grass, simulation of weather, fireflies or other visual effects; we refer to those moving objects as ambient motion. They create the atmosphere (i.e. sensorial qualities) of the game and they are often used to engage and/or inform the users. Interestingly, little is known about motion beyond its pre-attentive properties and specific emotions that it may evoke. To date, there is little empirical evidence of the influence of ambient motion on players' performance or gameplay in 3D games. In this paper we present a study in which participants played a game in one of three conditions. Each condition presented fireflies moving at different speeds. Our results suggest that the speed of ambient motion may influence the number of mistakes that players make while jumping platforms, especially if the players are new to games. However, due to constrained sample size, more experiments need to be conducted in order to generalize this finding.