Influences of visual effects on sense of agency in video games

Abstract Visual effects, such as screen shake, are widely implemented to enhance players’ experience in video games. The present study investigated how the screen shake modulated players’ sense of agency (SoA) using a game interface where participants controlled an avatar to attack appearing enemies. In experiment 1, a screen shake of varying intensities was triggered when an enemy was hit. The results showed that a stronger screen shake led to higher levels of both reported SoA over the avatar’s actions and the sense of exhilaration (SoE) derived from the attack events, indicating that subjective agency is influenced by the degree of screen shake. In experiment 2, we compared the effects of screen shake and visualized damage value and found that screen shake exhibited a more pronounced positive modulation on both SoA and SoE than damage value, suggesting that the influence of screen shake on SoA primarily arises from the inherent visual properties. Furthermore, multilevel structural equation modelling showed that the influences of visual effects and their intensity on SoA were fully mediated by exhilaration. Together, these findings suggest that the present visual effects serve as positive emotional cues presented simultaneously with action outcomes, retrospectively modulating the agency inferences in a positive direction.