General Gaming The Guardian: 'There's a gaping hole in our knowledge': the scientists studying why gamers invert their controls

[AbsolutSurgen]

'There's a gaping hole in our knowledge': the scientists studying why gamers invert their controls

Quote

It is one of the most contentious aspects of video game playing – a debate where opposing sides literally cannot see each other’s perspective. When the Guardian ran an article asking why a large minority of game players invert the Y axis on their controls – meaning that they push their joypad’s thumb stick down to move upwards on the screen – the response was huge. Hundreds of comments vociferously arguing why axis inversion was the only way to navigate a game world, and hundreds more incredulously arguing the opposite.

The purpose of the article was to discover reasons for this dichotomy in visual perception. Was axis inversion just a habit picked up from playing flight simulators or did it point to fundamental differences in how people perceive themselves in virtual worlds? There was no conclusion, but the argument raged on Twitter for days.

Now, one of the scientists interviewed for that article, Dr Jennifer Corbett, co-head of the Visual Perception and Attention Lab at Brunel University London, is taking the matter further. Inspired by the ensuing debate, she and colleague Dr Jaap Munneke have begun an exploratory study looking into the science behind controller inversion. With backgrounds in vision science and cognitive neuroscience, Corbett and Munneke have employed a variety of research methods, from neuro-imaging to computational modelling to psychophysics, in their previous work. Now, with the help of seven psychology students, they will be running remote behavioural and psychophysical experiments using volunteer gamers aged between 18 and 35.

There “Although it’s not per se a topic we’d study in our lab, we’d had to pause regular EEG and eye-tracking experiments due to Covid and shift to online experiments,” explains Corbett. “This was the perfect opportunity to pursue such a question, especially given how much this has excited the hardcore gamers in our lab.”

So what will the experiments with volunteers involve? “Generally, we will be measuring how fast and accurately people are able to mentally rotate shapes and the extent to which they rely on different body and contextual cues when making spatial judgments,” says Corbett. “There are no right or wrong answers in these tasks – we’re interested in how people might perform differently. We’ll obtain one or two measures – for example, average reaction time, average accuracy – from each participant in each of four short computerised online experiments and then correlate these measures with information from a questionnaire about gaming habits that each participant will also complete.”

From this exploratory study, Corbett and her team hope to gain insight into how an individual’s visual perceptual abilities may affect how they interact with both real and virtual environments. “For example,” she says, “it may be the case that the extent to which a person relies on visual versus bodily context has a huge influence on whether or not they choose to invert the Y axis on their gaming consoles.”

The results of the study could have more important ramifications than helping inverters appreciate non-inverters and vice versa. “Understanding the factors that drive human visual perception is useful for almost all aspects of gaming and visual technologies,” says Corbett. “Most research focuses on how people pay attention to individual objects, but humans can’t really process more than a few details at once. There’s a gaping hole in our knowledge regarding how our visual perception is heavily dependent on the rest of this vast majority of sensory information. Being able to predict how a person will interact within a given environment or context can bring about monumental advancements in technology.”

Corbett argues that learning how individuals differ in terms of the interactions between visual information (what’s on the screen) and motor behaviour (how the controller is used) will have a benefit to game designers, allowing them to optimise their controls. But also, appreciating that each person may have a given pattern of performance on mental rotation and perspective-taking tasks, could have much wider applications.

“Such findings may inform us about ways to maximise performance for pilots using ‘real’ flight consoles,” says Corbett. “In a broader context, understanding these sorts of individual differences can help us better predict where to place important information and where to double-check for easily missed information in everything from VR gaming to safety-critical tasks like detecting weapons in baggage scans or tumours in X-rays.”

So, what started as an existential argument between Guardian-reading game players may well end up informing a new understanding of visual perception and sensory input. In a world where an increasing number of our interactions are happening in digital and virtual spaces, understanding why some people push down to look up has never been more vital or less nerdy.

I know why I use inverted-Y controls.  All of the early 3D games I played from F/A-18 Interceptor, Carrier Command, Quake, Dark Forces, etc. all used inverted-Y controls as default.  I am not sure when non-inverted-Y controls became the standard -- but I suspect it was in the early '00s.

[Keyser_Soze]

11 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

 I am not sure when non-inverted-Y controls became the standard -- but I suspect it was in the early '00s.

 

Halo.

[SimpleG]

I always understood it that the preference was based on "camera" location. 

If your on the back of the camera you are inverted to pull eye of the camera up

So here is the camera facing right

 

========================================================>

I

I

I

V

 

 

 

Non inverted

On the front of the camera up pulls the the lens up

 

                                                                                                                            Y

                                                                                                                             I

                                                                                                                             I                

                                                                                                                             I

========================================================>

[stepee]

11 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

I always understood it that the preference was based on "camera" location. 

If your on the back of the camera you are inverted to pull eye of the camera up

So here is the camera facing right

 

========================================================>

I

I

I

V

 

 

 

Non inverted

On the front of the camera up pulls the the lens up

 

                                                                                                                            Y

                                                                                                                             I

                                                                                                                             I                

                                                                                                                             I

========================================================>

 

This always made sense to me though I saw someone mention the other day that well if you are looking at it that way wouldn’t you invert horizontal axis as well? I thought that was a fair point. 
 

Either way it’s wayyyyyy too late for me to change from inverted now, might just be nothing more than whatever you get used to first.

[Kal-El814]

2 minutes ago, stepee said:

 

This always made sense to me though I saw someone mention the other day that well if you are looking at it that way wouldn’t you invert horizontal axis as well? I thought that was a fair point. 
 

Either way it’s wayyyyyy too late for me to change from inverted now, might just be nothing more than whatever you get used to first.

Please, you're just ITT because the words "gaping hole" are in the thread title.

[Xbob42]

Specifically for the camera? Always "normal." Up is up. Left is left, etc. Inverting any of it makes diagonal camera movements a nightmare for me.

 

For movement while flying specifically? I can do it either way. It's easy to imagine a plane or any other flying object with a yoke, so that's fine. If it's not inverted, that's easy, too. Just means the directions work normally.

 

For anything and everything else, "up is up" is the way to live.

[gamer.tv]

I've always felt that vertical movement felt best when the characters head was being pulled upwards by an imaginary string, rather than lifted from the chin. I think it comes from the fact to look up, I tilt my head backwards and lean, rather than force it upwards. 

[Moa]

Inverted is for the 35+ crowd. 

[SimpleG]

8 minutes ago, Moa said:

Inverted is for the 35+ crowd. 

 

Mid 40's and non inverted 

[SimpleG]

1 hour ago, stepee said:

This always made sense to me though I saw someone mention the other day that well if you are looking at it that way wouldn’t you invert horizontal axis as well? I thought that was a fair point. 

If your point is inverted players are illogical heathens I agree with you

[Chairslinger]

My first real experience with FPS was Turok: Dinosaur Hunter on N64, so for 5 or 6 years that is what I preferred. Most N64 controls didn't offer non-inverted options anyway, if I remember right.

 

Then Rainbow Six 3 for the Xbox was the first FPS where I really put a massive amount of time into because of online play. And, for whatever reason, I did not change the default, non-inverted controls.

 

It really broke me of my preference for inverted controls, and at this point I don't think my brain would compute using them anymore.

[Keyser_Soze]

34 minutes ago, Moa said:

Inverted is for the 35+ crowd. 

 

I'm basically Xbob style and and I'm the +

[Mercury33]

I always just assumed people who liked inverted were Gingers, left handed or both. The lack of a soul is the only explanation. 

[XxEvil AshxX]

Well... the first experience I ever had as a gamer using a Y-axis was with flying games. And when flying an aircraft, you pull back to go up, and push forward to go down.

 

Also, if you think of the thumbstick as a lever on a fulcrum, if you wanted it to point down, you'd push up, and if you wanted to point it up, you pull it down. So i always invert camera controls. That's just the logical way my brain works I guess.

 

As for the left and right not being inverted, I think that comes from everyday driving/steering experiences. You want to go left, you turn left.

 

As an added bit of context. If there's a reticle on the screen but a static camera... like a cursor in a lightgun shooter like House of the Dead, up has to be up. Because the camera is not moving, just the cursor. If I'm playing a game on a PC using a mouse, up has to be up as well, because that's my life experience with a mouse. Up is up.

[BloodyHell]

I only invert for flight games. And now I just use my flight stick.

still need to get the new Flight Sim, but im waiting till I get a new 3d headset.

[Bacon]

I'm left handed and I don't play inverted unless it is flying. I prefer inverted(normal) controls for flying tho. 

[johnny]

If you prefer inverted you are old as Fuck

[gamer.tv]

I’m genuinely shocked how many don’t invert, I frequently make fun of my wife for not changing the setting.

[Dodger]

Inverted, probably am a monster and I’m 38 if it’s some sort of old person thing. It definitely came from flight controls, I want to say from the GTA3 trilogy and flying around. I just didn’t like switching back and forth. Now I’m just used to it and inverting the y is the first thing I do when I start a new game.

[jaethos]

Top Gun on the NES started me on inverted, used it ever since.

[crispy4000]

I’d tilt my wrist back to aim a gun up.   So inverted.
 

I get much more confused with horizontal inversion in 3rd person games.  Every so often I second guess what I like.  Probably because Mario 64 is no longer the standard anymore.

[Brick]

Is it really that much of a mystery? It's like flying a plane; if you want to go up, you pull back on the controls, so with a joystick to look up you pull back which is down. 

[Fizzzzle]

I kind of go back and forth. It's something I don't really pay attention to until I think about it, then if I think about it too much I get confused. It's like trying to remember if you write your "O"s clockwise or counter-clockwise, then writing o's just feels weird.

[Chairslinger]

I loaded up Minecraft and inverted the controls just for the hell of it.

 

Took me all of 20 seconds before I flew directly into the ground and nearly died.

 

The wires in my brain just don't work like that anymore. It was like the gaming equivalent of a baby deer trying to walk for the first time

[Bloodporne]

First thing I do when starting up any new game is ensure the camera up/down is inverted, it feels totally wrong and fucked up to me to even try to play without inverted and I've tried.

[thedarkstark]

After like 2-3 minutes of adjusting I can play with either, I generally stick to "up is up" because it's usually the default setting and it feels more natural anyways. I do invert for flight games, again mainly because it's the default and it just feels right.. 

[Jason]

13 hours ago, Fizzzzle said:

I kind of go back and forth. It's something I don't really pay attention to until I think about it, then if I think about it too much I get confused. It's like trying to remember if you write your "O"s clockwise or counter-clockwise, then writing o's just feels weird.

 

This is also something I tend to not think too hard about unless I'm playing a game and the default feels unnatural. I think it's more about whether I'm on a mouse or gamepad joystick? I'm pretty sure I'm always up is up on a mouse, but that it depends on what I'm doing on a joystick? I think on joysticks it's up is up for first person stuff, or third person but you're still aiming a gun or something off the camera, but inverted for camera control on a third person view...but again, I'd have to actually sit down and play a bunch of stuff to tell you for sure.