Posted on Saturday, September 04 2010 @ 6:05 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Valve boss Gabe Newell reveals that after having toyed with gaze-tracking technology to better understand where gamers are looking during play, his is now turning its attention to biometrics to get a better understanding of what game testers experience when they're testing new games:
"So when you look at our games, more and more we have this representation of player state, where we think we know how you feel, essentially," Gabe Newell explained in the latest issue of PC Gamer.
"With biometrics, rather than guessing, we can actually use a variety of things like gaze tracking, skin galvanic response, pulse rate and so on. Through combining those pieces of information, we can get a much more accurate indication of player state, so that's something we're super interested in."
Newell revealed that Valve had conducted some "experiments" (mwah ha ha) in the space and seen some "easy wins" as well as some "surprising side-effects" - including possible benefits to consumer gameplay.
"If you're in a competitive situation and you see someone's heart rate go up, it's way more rewarding than we would have thought," he said. "And if you see somebody in a co-op game sweating, people tend to respond to that way more than we would have thought."
More details
at CVG.
