Thesis Results.xlsx

Competitive gaming or esports is following a similar trajectory as traditional sports with esports organizations offering lucrative signing deals to athletes and multi-million-dollar tournament prize pools. With the immense competition, athletes commonly use stimulants such as caffeine to boost their performance. However, caffeine has been found to have negative long-term health complications and may harm performance in the short term. Thus, a healthier performance-boosting alternative would be invaluable to reducing caffeine dependence among athletes. However, there is a gap in research looking at such alternatives, especially those involving physical activity. This study investigated the comparative improvement in aim performance on Aim Labs after the consumption of 100 mg of caffeine or placebo and performing acute exercise for a minimum of 2 minutes to induce a 20% increase in heart rate. Participants were asked to perform 5 Aim Labs Gridshot rounds before and after the experimental conditions to calculate their average score. Gridshot is an aim-training task which involves clicking on a series of blue spheres arranged in a grid. Only exercise had a significant effect on the participants’ performance and showed a greater impact than even caffeine. Overall, the results of this study suggest a promising new avenue for research into improving gaming performance across various genres. This novel research direction may assist in reducing athlete dependence on performance-enhancing stimulants and long-term health complications.