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The Impact of Motion and Delay on Selecting Game Targets with a Mouse

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Published:21 June 2020Publication History
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Abstract

All real-time computer games, particularly networked computer games, have a delay from when a player starts an action (e.g., clicking the mouse) until the game renders the result (e.g., firing a projectile). This delay can degrade both player performance (e.g., reduced game score) and quality of experience (e.g., the game is less fun). While previous work has studied the effects of delay on commercial games and individual game actions, a more detailed understanding is needed of the effects of delay on moving target selection with realistic target motion, a common scenario in many games. This paper presents an in-depth study of the effects of delay on the fundamental game action of selecting a moving target with a mouse while varying two parameters for the target motion – turn frequency and turn angle. We design and implement a custom game where players select moving targets using a mouse, while the game controls both the target motion and input delay. Analysis of data gathered in a 56-person user study shows both target selection time and accuracy degrade with delay. However, both selection time and accuracy increase with the frequency and angle of changes in the target’s movement, because turning slows targets down even while making them less predictable. We set these results in the context of other studies of delay and target selection by comparing our findings to those in seven other previously published papers that investigated the effects of delay on target selection.

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      • Published in

        cover image ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications
        ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications  Volume 16, Issue 2s
        Special Issue on Smart Communications and Networking for Future Video Surveillance and Special Section on Extended MMSYS-NOSSDAV 2019 Best Papers
        April 2020
        291 pages
        ISSN:1551-6857
        EISSN:1551-6865
        DOI:10.1145/3407689
        Issue’s Table of Contents

        Copyright © 2020 ACM

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 21 June 2020
        • Online AM: 7 May 2020
        • Accepted: 1 March 2020
        • Revised: 1 February 2020
        • Received: 1 December 2019
        Published in tomm Volume 16, Issue 2s

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