Differentiating right upper limb movements of esports players who play different game genres

Esports is a fast-growing worldwide phenomenon encompassing hundreds of millions of competitive players. It is well-established that different game genres require distinct cognitive skills, but the biomechanical implications of playing different game genres have received little attention. This is the first study to quantify gamers’ kinematic behaviour across genres, demonstrating the importance of physical demands on performance and equipment in esports. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the right upper limb kinematic behaviour differs among players across game genres. 63 esports players played a First Person Shooter (FPS), Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA), or Adventure game for 10 min. Three tri-axial accelerometers, positioned on each participant’s right upper limb (hand, forearm, arm), recorded kinematic data during gameplay. Hand acceleration magnitude, direction change, distance travelled (sum of all hand displacements over 10-min of gameplay), and displacement area (size and shape) were calculated in addition to hand, forearm, and arm acceleration ratios. There was a marked difference in movement patterns across players of different game genres. FPS players displayed greater hand acceleration magnitude (0.96 m.s⁻² ± 0.07 SEM), moved their hand through a greater distance (38.96 m ± 2.47 SEM), and over a larger displacement area (119.13 cm² ± 16.05 SEM) compared to MOBA and Adventure players. MOBA players exhibited greater hand acceleration magnitude (0.73 m.s⁻² ± 0.05 SEM), changed direction more (2335 ± 172 SEM) and covered more distance (29.25 m ± 1.80 SEM) compared to Adventure players within a smaller overall area (70.49 cm² ± 9.91 SEM). These findings have the potential to impact the design of gaming equipment and the training volumes of gamers across different game genres, so as to mitigate injury risk and improve overall gaming performance.