Influence of audiovisual feedback on player behavior and performance in response to video game failure

Audiovisual feedback is one of the most essential elements in video games. Although most feedback does not affect game mechanics, it is believed to have an impact on a player's experience. One of the concepts in audiovisual feedback is "juiciness," or providing excessive positive feedback. A few empirical studies have analyzed how juiciness affects the performance and behavior of players. Yet there are few studies on how the kind of feedback and its timing affect player behavior and performance in video games. This paper focuses on the audiovisual feedbacks given to players when they fail in a game. If players experience many failures during gameplay, their behavior may change depending on the audiovisual feedback they receive at the time of failure. We hypothesized that if the feedback to failures was "feel-good," a player would be motivated to replay the game and try to improve performance. In the first phase of the experiment, five different feedback patterns were prepared and measured by quantifying impressions using the semantic differential method. An A/B test was then conducted using a simple web action game. Players were presented with different audiovisual feedback patterns for each of five groups when they failed in the game. The analysis in multiple comparisons revealed no significant differences in spontaneous replay behavior. The test did, however, result in differences in players' average scores, suggesting that audiovisual feedback on failure could affect player performance.