A Few More tidbits from Academia: Black is good in Games and Visual complexity and Challenge

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cyber.2013.0289

In a test in which players were placed with virtual Caucasian and virtual African-American players, Whites generally evaluated African-American players more positively than white players. I can only speculate on the reasons for this, but as a test of social inclusion this shows that online games work towards better inclusion of minorities (and other outgroups) in the predominate ingroup.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140139.2013.847214#.UnuTXnASbXo
In this yeah duh! paper, the researchers find that greater background complexity in a game distracts the player increasing the challenge. What I love is that they suggest increasing background complexity to make games more challenging in places and decreasing it accordingly which is a really clever way of changing difficulty.