Improving Player Performance by Developing Gaze Aware Games

Context. Eye tracking technology has been applied to video games, mainly, as an offline analysis tool or as an input for game control. Nevertheless, eye tracking systems applied to video games is a topic considered to be on an infant state that requires further development. The following study explore a different approach in how eye tracking systems can be used for video game interaction. Objectives. By implementing a gaze based interaction technique, a gaze aware space shooting game will be developed in order to provide in-game assistance that could improve player's performance. Method. With the help of a Tobii REX eye traking system, a set of 26 volunteers played two video games in a controlled environment. Both of the games had the same mechanics and elements, but only one of them implemented the gaze based interaction technique. The player performance was calculated in terms of the time needed by the players to finish each of the games. A statistic significance analysis was done in order to determine if the testing data provided sufficient evidence to conclude a performance improvement. Results. The results showed a reduction on the time needed to finish the game on the gaze aware prototype, having an average time difference of 74.03 seconds and overcoming a confidence level of 99.9\% when submitting the testing data to a paired t-Test. Also, the majority of the players chose the gaze aware game as the most enjoyable, in terms of their personal preferences. Conclusions. The testing results provided sufficient evidence to conclude that the gaze aware game improved the performance of all of the selected participants. This study provides a starting point for further development of eye tracking systems as a task assisting method on video game interaction.