Does Eye Tracking Enhance the Gaming Experience?
As eye tracking started to gain popularity in past years and people started to notice potential for change in various industries, some of the first questions asked were centered around control and efficiency. Take the video game world, for example.
Many conversations surrounding gaming and eye tracking technology have to do with how well a player can control the game. Is it accurate? Is the control precise? What are often overlooked, however, are the qualitative observations when it comes to gaming. How does eye tracking enhance the actual game play, for example?
A presentation last year at the 5th Conference on Communication by Gaze Interaction (COGAIN 2009) focused on just this. With eye tracking having been well researched in the field of human-computer interaction, just how does it measure up in the gaming world when it comes to experience? The presentation cites researchers’ recent studies comparing eye and mouse control as input for three-dimensional computer games. They found that gaze control was more accurate and that the actual game experience was perceived as “subjectively more enjoyable and committing.” Participants felt more immersed in the game when using the eye tracker and a gaming input device.
The article cites a new study that broadly investigated game play experience in a 3D gaze interaction game by testing the reliability of a range of subjective experiential questionnaires focusing on self-report game experience, flow, and presence. Researchers created a game using the Half-Life 2 Source SDK platform, designing it around the concept of navigation in a 3D virtual environment. For participants, the goal was to navigate successfully across a labyrinthine catwalk and around a series of obstacles to a door indicating the end of the level. At the Dreamhack Winter gaming conference in Sweden, thirty random participants were selected to try the interactive task and then complete the game experience questionnaire, measuring experiential dimensions of immersion, tension, competence, flow, negative affect, positive affect, and challenge.
Overall, the results of the questionnaire showed a consistently positive experience, with immersion and flow scoring the highest amongst the categories. Positive affect was high and negative affect quite low on the charts amongst the average game play experience scores. Of course, some of this may be due to the fact that the research was done in a relatively experimental setting – a computer game festival, and so perhaps the novelty of playing the game in such an environment might be something to consider, but the scores were so consistent, the article argues that there was something to it.
Gameplay experience in a gaze interaction game
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