New Study Explains the Reasoning Behind the Direction of Side-Scrollers

Think about side-scrollers for a moment. What trait do video games of this genre share? Is it:

A) They all involve flying frogs

B) All characters are blue hedgehogs

C) They scroll from left to right

Okay, it's obviously C. But have you ever considered why side-scrollers always scroll from left to right and never right to left?

Well new research reveals the answer. Dr. Peter Walker, of UK's Lancaster University, suggests that humans just simply have a fundamental bias toward the direction of side-scrolling, which is featured in the journal Perception.

He states:

One graphic convention involves depicting items leaning forward into their movement, with greater leaning conveying greater speed. Another convention, revealed in the present study, involves depicting items moving from left to right.

So the faster the motion, the more rightward biased we humans become.

This is only in the case of motion though. Turns out that when there are stationary objects or people, either no bias or a leftward bias is established.

Digital Trends presents a brilliant example. Take a look at Italicized text. There is obvious left-to-right bias, which emphasizes and represents speed or urgency in the writing.

So to put it simply, it's just the way we humans are wired - how our brains perceive motion.