Measuring Immersion and Enjoyment in a 2D Top-Down Game by Replacing the Mouse Input with Eye Tracking

Background. Eye tracking has been evaluated and tried in different 2D settings for research purposes. Most commercial games that are using eye tracking use it as an assistive extra input method and are focused around third or first person. There are few 2D games developed with eye tracking as an input method. This thesis aims to test the use of eye tracking as a replacement input method with a chosen set of mechanics for the purpose of playing a 2D top-down game with eye tracking as the main input method. Objectives. To test eye tracking in a 2D top-down game and use it as a replacement input method for the mouse in a novel effort to evaluate immersion and enjoyment. Method. To conduct this study the Tobii 4C eye tracker is used as the replacement peripheral in a 2D game prototype developed for the study. The game prototype is developed with the Unity game engine which the participants played through twice with a different input mode each time. Once with a keyboard and mouse and a second time with a keyboard and an eye tracker. The participants played different modes in alternating order to not sway the results. For the game prototype three different mechanics were implemented, to aim, search for hidden items and remove shadows. To measure immersion and enjoyment an experiment was carried out in a controlled manner, letting participants play through the game prototype and evaluating their experience. To evaluate the experience the participants answered a questionnaire with 12 questions relating to their perceived immersion and a small interview with 5 questions about their experience and perceived enjoyment. The study had a total of 12 participants. Results. The results from the data collected through the experiment indicate that the participants enjoyed and felt more involvement in the game, 10 out of 12 participants answering that they felt more involved with the game using eye tracking compared to the mouse. Analyzing the interviews, the participants stated that eye tracking made the game more difficult and less natural to control compared to the mouse. There is a potential problem that might sway the results toward eye tracking, most participants stated that eye tracking is a new experience and none of the participants had used it to play video games before. Conclusions. The results from the questionnaire prove the hypothesis with statistics, with a p-value of 0.02 < 5% for both increased involvement and enjoyment using eye tracking. Although the result might be biased due to the participant's inexperience with eye tracking in video games. Most of the participants reacted positively towards eye tracking with the most common reason being that it was a new experience to them