At the 2026 Summer Conference of the Digital Games Research Association JAPAN (DiGRA JAPAN), held September 11–12, 2026, the oral presentation “Evaluating Imperceptible Control Assistance for Joystick Input” by Taichiro Yui et al. received the Student Conference Award.
We have previously proposed an assistance method for the analog stick input of game controllers that corrects the player’s operation only while the stick input is changing, so that the assistance remains imperceptible to the player. In this study, we applied this method to situations requiring large stick movements, such as navigating curved paths, and examined both its effectiveness in improving driving accuracy and the extent to which the assistance was perceptible to players.
The results showed that the proposed method improved driving accuracy compared with no assistance, while remaining less perceptible than continuous assistance.
Questionnaire responses and oral interviews also revealed individual differences in players’ attitudes toward assistance. These findings suggest that, given such individual differences, it may be desirable to design assistance according to the type of game experience developers aim to provide.
The Student Conference Award is given to the presentation among all student presentations that is recognized as outstanding. At this conference, only this one presentation received the award. This also marks the study’s second award, following EC2025.
発表論文
- Report: “Evaluating Imperceptible Control Assistance for Joystick Input” Taichiro Yui, Kentaro Fukuchi, Proc. of Summer Conference, DiGRA JAPAN. (2026) — 🏆Student Conference Award