Here's Looking at You, Player - The Potential of Eye Tracking Analysis for Player-centered Learning Game Design

There is no doubt that technology enhanced learning, in general, and game-based learning, in particular, needs thoughtful preparation, a careful design and a reliable implementation to meet the expectations of impact. But e-learning systems and serious games are digital media which usually are perceived very differently by different human learners with individually varying background and experience and within varying contexts. Perception and impact of media are a very delicate issue to be investigated carefully on a firm scientific basis. Digital games designed and implemented for special purposes of learning are particularly difficult to evaluate. Eye tracking is a technology suitable for the analysis of essential features of media perception which are relevant to learning. Eye tracking human learners’ interactions with a serious game allows for the detection of substantial phenomena crucial for the design of game playing experiences likely to foster learning processes. 1 THE AUTHORS’ POSITION “Here’s looking at you, kid. ” is a citation from the classic movie Casablanca by Michael Curtiz, 1942, starring Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart. The malapropism “Here’s looking at you, User. ” is due to Christian Wolff1 in his 2009 lecture on eye tracking in human-machine interaction. For the present paper, this idea has been adopted and adapted to direct the reader’s attention to eye tracking of human game play. The authors’ particular focus is on game-based learning (Prensky, 2001). Undoubtedly, play takes a significant place in the development of humans and animals allowing for risk-free exploration and experiment. But contemporary serious games largely fail in meeting the high expectations of game-based learning (see, e.g., (Jantke, 2006a), (Jantke, 2007)). The state of affair is harshly, but felicitously summarized by Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen in his book on the potential of serious games as follows: “Edutainment started as a serious attempt to create computer games that taught children different subjects. Arguably, it ended up as a caricature of computer games and a reactionary use of learning theory. ” ((Egenfeldt-Nielsen, 2007), p. 42) There is a necessity to abandon this state of affair. There is abundant evidence for the need of a wide spectrum of methodologies and tools supporting for1 http://www.uni-regensburg.de/sprache-literatur-kultur/ medieninformatik/sekretariat-team/christian-wolff/vortraege mative evaluation of the design and implementation of serious games. The authors’ position advocated throughout the present paper is to employ eye tracking analysis for the improvement of learning systems development, in general, and of serious games, in particular. According to the authors’ very best knowledge, there is not yet much systematic usage of eye tracking in the process of designing and implementing digital games suitable for serious purposes such as training and learning. The authors’ opinion advocated by means of the present conference contribution relies on a variety of serious games developed and implemented by their team (see, e.g., (Jantke, 2006b), (Gaudl et al., 2009), (Jantke et al., 2009), (Arnold et al., 2013), and (Krebs, 2013) including the usage of eye tracking analysis. The aim of the paper includes some exemplified application of eye tracking analysis applied to some serious game project. There is a number of qualitative questions to be answered. In the authors’ opinion, the usefulness of eye tracking analysis for player-centered learning game design and implementation can be demonstrated. This completes the positions to be advocated below.