Eye Tracking’s Impact on Player Performance and Experience in a 2D Space Shooter Video Game.

Abstract: Background. Although a growing market, most of the commercially available gamestoday that features eye tracking support is rendered in a 3D perspective. Games ren-dered in 2D have seen little support for eye trackers from developers. By comparing the differences in player performance and experience between an eye tracker and acomputer mouse when playing a classic 2D genre: space shooter, this thesis aim tomake an argument for the implementation of eye tracking in 2D video games. Objectives. Create a 2D space shooter video game where movement will be handledthrough a keyboard but the input method for aiming will alter between a computermouse and an eye tracker. Methods. Using a Tobii EyeX eye tracker, an experiment was conducted with fif-teen participants. To measure their performance, three variables was used: accuracy,completion time and collisions. The participants played two modes of a 2D spaceshooter video game in a controlled environment. Depending on which mode wasplayed, the input method for aiming was either an eye tracker or a computer mouse.The movement was handled using a keyboard for both modes. When the modes hadbeen completed, a questionnaire was presented where the participants would ratetheir experience playing the game with each input method. Results. The computer mouse had a better performance in two out of three per-formance variables. On average the computer mouse had a better accuracy andcompletion time but more collisions. However, the data gathered from the question-naire shows that the participants had on average a better experience when playingwith an eye tracker Conclusions. The results from the experiment shows a better performance for par-ticipants using the computer mouse, but participants felt more immersed with the eyetracker and giving it a better score on all experience categories. With these results,this study hope to encourage developers to implement eye tracking as an interactionmethod for 2D video games. However, future work is necessary to determine if theexperience and performance increase or decrease as the playtime gets longer.