Cyclops Staring Contest is an experimental eye-controlled game in which players challenge a cyclops to a staring contest. It was developed in Unity with C# and makes use of the Tobii EyeX Controller eye-tracking hardware.

Concept

The concept behind Cyclops Staring Contest is that the player happens upon a sleeping cyclops. Startled, the cyclops awakens and initiates a staring contest. The player must gaze upon the pupil of the cyclops for as long as possible without blinking or looking away. The player wins the contest if the Cyclops blinks first. The more rounds the player wins, the harder the cyclops becomes to defeat. Indeed, the cyclops is not above pulling off a few tricks in order to distract the player and improve its chances of victory.

In Cyclops Staring Contest, the player must maintain focus long enough to best the opponent

Source

The full source code, assets, Unity project, and version 1.0 Windows executable are available on GitHub. All are welcome to make use of this project as-is, with modification, or for redistribution. See the included license file for details.

Conclusion

Building from my previous project, Beams, Cyclops Staring Contest is my second experimentation with eye-controlled interfaces for gaming. While Beams utilized the player's eyes to aim at fast-moving targets, Cyclops Staring Contest emphasizes the player's long-term gaze upon a specified object. These demonstrations only begin to explore how eye-tracking can be used in games and interactive media. For instance, imagine a game in which non-player characters are context aware and behave differently according to when, how, and why the player looks at them.

Note: This article was originally posted to GameDes.in