Introduction, what is eyegazegames?

In 2023 alone, an astonishing 3.26 billion people (41% of the world’s population) actively engaged in video gaming. The days of pixelated arcade games and hour-long loading times are well behind us, and video game consoles have become common place in most households. Nowadays there’s a game out there for pretty much any interest you might have and thanks to this we see more and more people of all age groups and backgrounds joining the gaming community, so for some people who have difficulty accessing games with the traditional controls this can lead to feeling a bit excluded. Thankfully over the years more and more new technology has been released, made public or become easier to access which can aid these individuals with their gaming endeavors. One of these technologies is something called an eye gaze tracker, which allows users to operate the mouse function on a device using their eyes. Eye gaze games is a website that lets users play web games with eye gaze technology moving their cursor using their eyes on a variety of games, ranging from racing to sudoku and more.

Technology

The eye gaze technology is essentially just a mix of software and hardware working together to complete a task, but using these devices we can achieve so much more than you could imagine. The hardware consists of a camera with infrared lights that is typically placed under the screen and set up in position using a mount that can be easily attached and detached from a wheelchair or desk etc. The software is installed through the product website.  The software converts the input from your eyes that the camera picks up into the movement of your cursor. One of the major producers of eye gaze devices at the moment is a company called Tobiidynavox. For more information about their range of products Click here .

For this review, a Tobii PCeye mini eye tracker and My Tobii Gaze point software were installed on a Windows 10 Surface Pro.

Similar products

Obviously, the website www.eyegazegames.com is not the only resource out there for users who struggle with the use of the traditional mouse to venture into the world of video games, after all the internet has a million solutions for almost anything nowadays. There are companies such as “special effect “who have designed a version of Minecraft specifically to be played with eye gaze device controls. To find out more about special effect and what they do click here . There are also a few games on the Microsoft store which can be played with eye gaze devices, if want to check those out there is a list of games on the Tobii website. Overall compared to other resources out there I would rate eyegazegames.com quite well, mainly because it’s so accessible, it’s free, it’s easy to set up and play and it caters for its users well. It’s an amazing resource, especially for kids or just people who are new to eye gaze or new to gaming.

Pros

• Easy access, all you have to do is connect your device, go to the website and play
• A decent range of games and genres of games
• Good quality of the games and the user has the ability to change the difficulty and/or control binds and allows the user to edit their eye gaze controls specifically for the website
• accessible to people of many demographics as the user can choose between playing with a keyboard, gamepad or eye gaze device
• Offers gaming across many platforms as it is an online domain
• 5 separate and accurate language presets
• Allows users to play online, co-op or against the computer

Cons

• Though there is a decent variety of games on the website is still a bit limiting as the user can only play the games on the website
• Cannot be played offline
• Sometimes there are slight problems with calibration which results in cursor drift on the games(rarely)

Conclusion

As you can see the pros of eye gaze games outweigh the cons, it really is just a super nice website to play some games, it caters so well to all kinds of users. I would definitely recommend it for children or people who are getting used to eye gaze but it’s great for anyone. I think that for schools it would also be a pretty good resource just for students to have fun. It’s super easy to use and has so many good features, users can edit so many of the controls just to make the games suit their playstyle or physical ability. If you have any difficulties with the website or setting it up, then Click here and watch this video

For any further queries about eye gaze or other types of assistive technology checkout further blog posts on Enable Ireland’s AT&Me blog.