Gaze interaction and gameplay for Generation Y and Baby Boomer users

Abstract

As high quality eye tracking devices become more readily available and affordable, gaze interaction is becoming a viable and fun way to interact with games. Because we direct our eyes toward objects that we choose to attend to, gaze is likely to provide a natural way to manipulate objects in certain types of games. However, little work has been done to design and test games that use gaze as an interaction method. Despite the popular belief that the majority of gamers are young, research shows that Baby Boomers also like to play games. Thus, understanding possible differences in interaction preferences of these two generations provides valuable insight for developers who are planning to design gaze-enabled games for these two populations. In this study, we examine the gaze interaction experience of Baby Boomer and Generation Y users by comparing them to the familiar mouse interaction experience.