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Gaze controlled games

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Abstract

The quality and availability of eye tracking equipment has been increasing while costs have been decreasing. These trends increase the possibility of using eye trackers for entertainment purposes. Games that can be controlled solely through movement of the eyes would be accessible to persons with decreased limb mobility or control. On the other hand, use of eye tracking can change the gaming experience for all players, by offering richer input and enabling attention-aware games. Eye tracking is not currently widely supported in gaming, and games specifically developed for use with an eye tracker are rare. This paper reviews past work on eye tracker gaming and charts future development possibilities in different sub-domains within. It argues that based on the user input requirements and gaming contexts, conventional computer games can be classified into groups that offer fundamentally different opportunities for eye tracker input. In addition to the inherent design issues, there are challenges and varying levels of support for eye tracker use in the technical implementations of the games.

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Notes

  1. Calling such devices gaze trackers might be more accurate, since their most important function is that they track the eyes with such precision that they can calculate where the eye is pointing. We call these devices eye trackers to follow the convention within the field.

  2. For an example see the Chicken shooting game example in this paper.

  3. Cgoban3 is available for free at http://www.gokgs.com.

  4. http://www.chickenshoot.com.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Sciences/TAUCHI, University of Tampere, 33014, Tampere, Finland

    Poika Isokoski & Oleg Spakov

  2. Department of Psychology, Dresden University of Technology, Dresden, Germany

    Markus Joos

  3. LITA, University of Paul Verlaine, Metz, 57045, Metz Cedex 1, France

    Benoît Martin

Authors
  1. Poika Isokoski
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  2. Markus Joos
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  3. Oleg Spakov
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  4. Benoît Martin
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Correspondence to Poika Isokoski.

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Isokoski, P., Joos, M., Spakov, O. et al. Gaze controlled games. Univ Access Inf Soc 8, 323–337 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-009-0146-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-009-0146-3

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