Improving the user experience of game play using next generation controllers

Video games have gone through a large amount of changes in terms of controls. Manipulating a joystick, mouse and D-Pad are standard control schemes since the 1960s, but now comes the time when new technology is inspiring developers to develop immersive and revolutionary user experience in gaming. From Virtual Reality to Augmented Reality, developers have built and theorized many products that showcased innovative controls such as body gestures, hand movements, facial recognition and voice commands. With hardware that can sense body movement and hand gesture, it has come to a point where art is also involved to help broaden the horizon and also unify video games and art together. Since the release of home consoles, the game industries have tried to utilize art in some shape or form into their products like graphics, sounds and even controls. The Nintendo Wii, Xbox Kinect (formerly known as Project Natal), and PlayStation Move are prime examples of improving the user experience in gaming with the usage of motion sensors and augmented reality. With its ground-breaking technology, these products can also display creative ways to playa game using art such as brushing and stroking with the Wii Remote or PlayStation Move and drawing a picture into a piece of paper and have the PlayStation Eye copy the sketch. The other hardware (that is non-commercialized) is the Emotiv headset that allows user interaction using Brain Computer Interaction (BCI). This project is about researching ways in which to increase the quality of user experience in computer vision based game systems. It has begun by reviewing historical precedents, testing current systems and exploring complementary technologies that will allow the development of prototype games that explore the user experience and quality of interaction. This thesis will be finalized and concluded at the end of this project.