Abstract
This paper studies the use of eye tracking in a First-Person Shooter (FPS) game as a mechanism to: (1) control the attention of the player’s avatar according to the attention deployed by the player; and (2) guide the gameplay and game’s procedural content generation, accordingly. This results in a more natural use of eye tracking in comparison to a use in which the eye tracker directly substitutes control input devices, such as gamepads. The study was conducted on a custom endless runner FPS, Zombie Runner, using an affordable eye tracker. Evaluation sessions showed that the proposed use of eye tracking provides a more challenging and immersive experience to the player, when compared to its absence. However, a strong correlation between eye tracker calibration problems and player’s overall experience was found. This means that eye tracking technology still needs to evolve but also means that once technology gets mature enough players are expected to benefit greatly from the inclusion of eye tracking in their gaming experience.
Highlights
With eye tracking dating back from the XVIII century [1], many have been the applications for this technology, such as medicine [2]), robotics [3,4]), advertising [5]) and, more recently, computer games [6]
These comparisons were often made after asking players to compete against each other or asking users to complete a given task, using the different input methods. These comparisons provided mixed results, with some studies claiming that the use of eye tracking contributed to better task completion [10], while others claiming that traditional input devices provided better overall results [7]. These previous studies have provided contradictory results regarding the effectiveness of the use of eye tracking in computer games as a direct control input, which may be an indication that eye tracking is not best suited to direct input control
To demonstrate the value of the proposed alternative uses of eye tracking in computer games, we developed and tested our own endless runner First-Person Shooter (FPS), Zombie Runner
Summary
With eye tracking dating back from the XVIII century [1], many have been the applications for this technology, such as medicine [2]), robotics [3,4]), advertising [5]) and, more recently, computer games [6]. Research on computer games tried to compare traditional input (e.g., mouse, keyboard, and gamepad) with eye tracking input, in terms of action accuracy and responsiveness [6,7,8,9,10] These comparisons were often made after asking players to compete against each other or asking users to complete a given task, using the different input methods. Bearing the limitations of eye tracking as a simple direct control input in mind, in this paper, we propose to use it to control the attention of the player’s avatar and the game’s procedural content generation. This means that, instead of analysing objective performance-based data, as in previous studies, we are more
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