Looks Can Be Deceiving: Using Gaze Visualisation to Predict and Mislead Opponents in Strategic Gameplay

Joshua Newn, Fraser Allison, Eduardo Velloso and Frank Vetere

CHI '18: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

In competitive co-located gameplay, players use their opponents' gaze to make predictions about their plans while simultaneously managing their own gaze to avoid giving away their plans. This socially competitive dimension is lacking in most online games, where players are out of sight of each other. We conducted a lab study using a strategic online game; finding that (1) players are better at discerning their opponent's plans when shown a live visualisation of the opponent's gaze, and (2) players who are aware that their gaze is tracked will manipulate their gaze to keep their intentions hidden. We describe the strategies that players employed, to various degrees of success, to deceive their opponent through their gaze behaviour. This gaze-based deception adds an effortful and challenging aspect to the competition. Lastly, we discuss the various implications of our findings and its applicability for future game design.

Joshua Newn, Fraser Allison, Eduardo Velloso, and Frank Vetere. 2018. Looks Can Be Deceiving: Using Gaze Visualisation to Predict and Mislead Opponents in Strategic Gameplay. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 261, 1–12.

 

BibTex

@inproceedings{10.1145/3173574.3173835,
author = {Newn, Joshua and Allison, Fraser and Velloso, Eduardo and Vetere, Frank},
title = {Looks Can Be Deceiving: Using Gaze Visualisation to Predict and Mislead Opponents in Strategic Gameplay},
year = {2018},
isbn = {9781450356206},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173835},
doi = {10.1145/3173574.3173835},
abstract = {In competitive co-located gameplay, players use their opponents' gaze to make predictions about their plans while simultaneously managing their own gaze to avoid giving away their plans. This socially competitive dimension is lacking in most online games, where players are out of sight of each other. We conducted a lab study using a strategic online game; finding that (1) players are better at discerning their opponent's plans when shown a live visualisation of the opponent's gaze, and (2) players who are aware that their gaze is tracked will manipulate their gaze to keep their intentions hidden. We describe the strategies that players employed, to various degrees of success, to deceive their opponent through their gaze behaviour. This gaze-based deception adds an effortful and challenging aspect to the competition. Lastly, we discuss the various implications of our findings and its applicability for future game design.},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
pages = {1–12},
numpages = {12},
keywords = {deception, nonverbal leakage, plan recognition, gaze visualisation, competitive gameplay, intent recognition},
location = {Montreal QC, Canada},
series = {CHI '18}
}