Eye tracking in video games: Opportunities for game development and risks to privacy

  • Panel
  • Café
  • Friday 22.05 — 08:45 - 10:00

Organising Institution

Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI

Germany

  • Academic 2
  • Business 3
  • Policy 1
Eye tracking refers to the recording of a person's eye movements, which mainly consist of fixations, saccades, and regressions. Eye tracking, integrated into HMDs such as the Meta Quest Pro, is now used in a range of applications, e.g., in computer games for more intuitive human-computer interaction, but also to improve graphics performance or game content. However, the technology also has the potential to violate privacy. Eye tracking can be used to draw conclusions about mental, physical, and emotional states, ethnic affiliations, and many other insights into the “inner workings” of users. In our panel, we will discuss:

Questions to be answered

  1. How is eye tracking currently used in the video game industry and In what direction is the technology developing?
  2. What opportunities does the use of eye tracking offer stakeholders in the gaming industry?
  3. What risks to data protection and user privacy could arise?
  4. How can eye tracking be used in the gaming industry in a way that protects privacy and enables innovative business models?

Moderator

Murat Karaboga

Fraunhofer ISI - Germany

is a political scientist and project manager in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) business unit at the Department of Emerging Technologies at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI in Karlsruhe. Since then, he has led studies on the topics of voice, speech and face recognition as well as the social impact and regulation of deepfakes. In a new project (PRETINA), the privacy implications of eye tracking technologies are now being researched in order to contribute to a privacy-preserving, legally compliant and socially acceptable use of eye tracking technologies.

Speaker

Michael Raschke

Blickshift GmbH - Germany

studied Physics at the University of Stuttgart and University of Heidelberg. From 2009 to 2015 he was researcher at the VIS and developed new methods and technologies for the evaluation of visualizations. Michael Raschke is a world-wide known expert for the visualization-based analysis of eye tracking data, author and co-author of more than 40 publications in the fields eye tracking analysis, visual analytics and human-computer interaction. Together with Michael Wörner, Michael Raschke is CEO of Blickshift.

Speaker

Theresa Krampe

University of Tübingen, International Centre for Ethics in Science - Germany

Dr. Theresa Krampe is a postdoctoral researcher at the International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities at the University of Tübingen, where she specializes in game studies and digital culture. As a research associate for the project PRETINA (Privacy-preserving and legally compliant eye tracking in everyday digital life), her current research foci revolve around privacy in digital games and VR environments. She is furthermore interested in critical AI studies, media studies, and gender and queer studies. She is the author of Metareference in Videogames (Routledge 2025) as well as several articles published in peer-reviewed international journals such as Game Studies.

Speaker

Christian L. Geminn

University of Kassel - Germany

Christian Geminn, Dr. jur. habil., Priv.-Doz., has been working since 2011 at the Research Center for Information Systems Design (ITeG) at the University of Kassel. He earned his doctorate in 2013 on issues of fundamental rights-based technology design, and in 2023 his habilitation on the interactions between fundamental rights and digitization. Since 2021, he is primarily active in the coordination and moderation of “Platform Privacy”, an initiative funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space to support technological development that serves the common good. The "Platform Privacy" connects and supports a large number of interdisciplinary projects in which scientists from various disciplines develop legal, technical, and organizational solutions that enable us to uphold our fundamental rights and European values in our everyday digital lives. He is also currently a Visiting Scholar at the Graduate School of Social Data Science at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan.