Spaz! The Effects of Local Latency on Player Actions in a Desktop-Based Exergame

Abstract

Technological advancement has decreased network latencies while simultaneously increasing local latencies. This may impact exergames-video games that incorporate exercise-the most since exergames tend to have complicated platforms to capture player actions. This article presents a study using a custom desktop-based exergame that controls for local latency and measures player performance and quality of experience (QoE). Analysis of the results from a 37-person user study shows that while player performance and QoE degrade with latency, exergame actions are fairly tolerant of even hundreds of milliseconds of latency. Our data point toward a crucial tipping point at latency values of approximately 400 ms.