My background is in telecommunications (the technical side of video production), so I know that 30fps is (or was?) considered the standard for a lot of video. TV and movies don’t seem choppy when I watch them, so why does doubling the frame rate seem to matter so much when it comes to games? Reviewers mention it constantly, and I don’t understand why.
Because games are an interactive medium, in an action game, you’re basically responding to visual information on screen, making a judgment, and responding to it by performing input.
The more frames that happen per second, the more information you’re able to receive in the same amount of time, which is why frames are most important in driving games, fighting games, or twitch shooters. Things happen very fast in those games, so having less frames a second puts you at a small, but very real disadvantage.
The visual info on screen also represents your inputs since you control it. In an action game, higher FPS means you see your character responding to your inputs more quickly, which feels perceptibly better.
You can get used to 30 FPS just fine, but certain, mostly action, games are simply better with higher FPS, whether you’re the kind of person who cares or plays competitively or not. Believe it or not even going from 60 to 120 is still a noticeable change.