> “It turns out the most predictive out of all the factors we measured was how quickly gamers could mentally rotate things and overcome the Simon effect. The faster they were, the less likely they were to invert. People who said they sometimes inverted were by far the slowest on these tasks.” So does this mean non-inverters are better gamers? No, says Corbett. “Though they tended to be faster, they didn’t get the correct answer more than inverters who were actually slightly more accurate.”

> In short, gamers think they are an inverter or a non-inverter because of how they were first exposed to game controls. Someone who played a lot of flight sims in the 1980s may have unconsciously taught themselves to invert and now they consider that their innate preference; alternatively a gamer who grew up in the 2000s, when non-inverted controls became prevalent may think they are naturally a non-inverter. However, cognitive tests suggest otherwise. It’s much more likely that you invert or don’t invert due to how your brain perceives objects in 3D space.

Or maybe it is the opposite: playing frequently with (non-)inverted controls makes you better at the kind of games they made the subjects play in this test. This article does a very poor job convincing me that their thesis is correct.

My personal experience is that I never played a 3D game with a controller until a couple of years ago (I am 31). Always keyboars and mouse now. When I started, my girlfriend asked me if I preferred normal controls. I was equally terrible with either, so we stuck to whatever she prefers (both axes inverted). I have a very hard time believing that this is not just a matter of practice.