The effectiveness (or lack thereof) of aim-assist techniques in first-person shooter games

Aim-assistance techniques have been shown to work for player balancing in 2D environments, but little information exists about how well these techniques will work in a 3D FPS game. We carried out three studies of the performance of five different aim assists in an Unreal-based game world. The assists worked well in a target-range scenario (study 1), but their performance was reduced when game elements were introduced in a walkthrough map (study 2). We systematically examined the relationships between realistic game elements and assist performance (study 3). These studies show that two techniques -- bullet magnetism and area cursor -- worked well in a wide variety of situations. Other techniques that worked well were too perceptible, and some previously-successful techniques did not work well in any game-like scenario. Our studies are the first to provide empirical evidence of the performance of aim assist techniques in 3D environments, and the first to identify the complexities in using these techniques in real FPS games.