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Space Out Gaming: Comparing Distributed Practice Sessions with Massed Play

Published: 05 July 2024 Publication History

Abstract

With video games and Esports becoming ever-present, playing as long as possible to improve proficiency has become a common strategy among video game enthusiasts. This behavior does not only bear increased health and social risks, but is also connected to performance decline, which itself inhibits skill acquisition. To promote health and advance self-regulated learning, we investigate the effects of distributed practice on skill acquisition in an ecologically valid Esports task. As research about distributed practice in video games is restricted to simple games or short practice sessions, we explore the impact of distributed versus massed practice with an extended training period of 45 minutes. Using (n = 16) participants and a complex contemporary fighting game, we show that massed practice schedules do not provide any advantage over distributed ones - suggesting that practice time can be evenly distributed without improvement losses, which would alleviate health risks connected to longer sessions.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Low Latency Feedback: Contrasting Training Outcomes of Immediate versus Delayed Feedback in Speedrunning Super Mario Bros.Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36770878:CHI PLAY(1-14)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024

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cover image ACM Other conferences
FDG '24: Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games
May 2024
644 pages
ISBN:9798400709555
DOI:10.1145/3649921
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 05 July 2024

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Author Tags

  1. eSports
  2. observational study
  3. player performance
  4. spacing effect

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  • Short-paper
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

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FDG 2024
FDG 2024: Foundations of Digital Games
May 21 - 24, 2024
MA, Worcester, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 152 of 415 submissions, 37%

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View all
  • (2024)Low Latency Feedback: Contrasting Training Outcomes of Immediate versus Delayed Feedback in Speedrunning Super Mario Bros.Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36770878:CHI PLAY(1-14)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024

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