Impact of the motion and visual complexity of the background on players' performance in video game-like displays

The visual interfaces of virtual environments such as video games often show scenes where objects are superimposed on a moving background. Three experiments were designed to better understand the impact of the complexity and/or overall motion of two types of visual backgrounds often used in video games on the detection and use of superimposed, stationary items. The impact of background complexity and motion was assessed during two typical video game tasks: a relatively complex visual search task and a classic, less demanding shooting task. Background motion impaired participants' performance only when they performed the shooting game task, and only when the simplest of the two backgrounds was used. In contrast, and independently of background motion, performance on both tasks was impaired when the complexity of the background increased. Eye movement recordings demonstrated that most of the findings reflected the impact of low-level features of the two backgrounds on gaze control. Practitioner Summary: Variations in the low-level features of visual backgrounds may be used to control challenge in video games. Using a visually complex background will always increase game difficulty. For the simplest game tasks, background motion will also impair users' performance if background complexity is low.