WAYLA: Novel Gaming Experience Through Unique Gaze Interaction

Eye-tracking technology has mostly been used as a tool for psychology or market research to provide insights of users’ viewing behaviors. Few attempts have been made to integrate eye trackers into video games, where they have been used simply as a replacement for a mouse or joystick.

WAYLA is an original game that takes advantage of the unique properties of gaze-based interaction (reflexive saccade, for example) to achieve a gaming experience that is not available with traditional input devices. In most games, players need to continuously look at and switch among multiple targets and avoid distractors. As commercial eye-tracking technology become more affordable, it is becoming one of the emerging technologies of the near future. WAYLA is at the forefront of utilizing this new technology, and it will yield many valuable insights and lessons for the next generation of game development.