People often seek out ways to watch others perform complex action sequences (e.g., sports). What makes some sequences more enjoyable to watch than others? We generated 24 video clips of gameplay from a Flappy Bird-style video game. Clips varied in difficulty (how often players succeeded on average) and in moment-to-moment uncertainty (how likely the player was to crash at any given step). Participants (N=864) rated each video on one of three dimensions: how much they enjoyed it, how difficult the level appeared, or how dangerous the player's trajectory appeared. We found that participants preferred videos where the player seemed to be completing more difficult obstacle courses, but dangerousness did not predict enjoyment ratings. These findings show how procedurally generated stimuli can isolate the factors that affect how enjoyable an action sequence is to watch.

翻译：人们常常主动寻找观看他人完成复杂动作序列（例如运动）的方式。是什么让某些序列比其他序列更令人愉悦？我们生成了24段来自类Flappy Bird风格电子游戏的游戏视频片段。这些片段在难度（玩家平均成功频率）和逐刻不确定性（玩家在任意特定步骤中失败的可能性）上有所不同。参与者（N=864）分别从三个维度对每段视频进行评分：观赏愉悦度、关卡表象难度或玩家轨迹表象危险性。研究发现，参与者更偏好玩家看似在完成更高难度障碍挑战的视频，但危险性并不能预测愉悦评分。这些发现表明，程序化生成的刺激物如何能够分离出影响动作序列观赏愉悦度的因素。