EyeGuitar: making rhythm based music video games accessible using only eye movements

Rhythm based music games such as Guitar Hero are hugely popular and allow gamers to take on the role of a famous musician. To play such games you must press keys on virtual guitars in various combinations in time with the music. Gamers with severe physical disabilities cannot always use traditional input devices so alternative methods of input are required to play such games. Eye-gaze is a high bandwidth modality that can support this if suitable interaction techniques exist. By analysing actual gameplay a suitable eye-gaze interaction technique is designed for a Guitar Hero style game. We present results from a user study demonstrating that users are able to score higher with the gaze technique than using a keyboard for game input, albeit at the cost of gameplay. The experiment concludes with a case study in which a young person with physical disabilities is able to successfully play the game using only eye movements.