This Friday, fans of ELEAGUE will get an inside look at the moves esports players use to excel at their game — literally.
The esports brand run by Turner Sports and IMG is incorporating a number of emerging technologies to provide fans, broadcasters and the players themselves deeper insight into the workings of esports. ELEAGUE has partnered with Dell Gaming, Alienware, and gaming tech company Tobii to bring biometrics, advanced analytics, and virtual reality to the Counter Strike:Global Offensive tournament premier, ELEAGUE announced Thursday.
Chief among the technological enhancements is a type of biometrics — eye tracking. Tobii, which makes peripheral devices that track players’ eye movements, began a couple of years ago with the goal of entering the consumer electronics industry, but realized that to do so, it first had to find a niche.
“With this type of technology, you’re usually hitting the gamer market because gamers are early adopters,” Aaron Sternberg, Tobii’s vice president of software partnerships, told SportTechie in a phone interview.
Tobii’s technology uses micro projectors and sensors to track players’ eye movements, which are analyzed on Alienware computers — Tobii has a longstanding partnership with the Dell-owned gaming brand, Sternberg explained. The biometric data collected from the sensors then is overlaid onto the screen, showing anyone watching exactly where a player was looking.
ELEAGUE is leveraging Tobii’s alliance with Alienware to enhance its ability to provide analytics and offer deeper insight into how the pros play, Sternberg said. It’s insight that amateur esports players could benefit from to hone their own skills and make a push towards professional gaming. That added benefit could also help eye tracking become more of a mainstream gaming tool, rather than one used exclusively in pro settings.
However, Tobii’s technology is applied differently for esports than it is for other gaming experiences. While most gamers would use eye tracking as a complement to other peripherals and controls for a fully interactive experience, esports players competing in CS:GO on Friday will use eye tracking to trace their gaze on the screen and show exactly where they’re looking at any given second, Sternberg explained.
“We’re essentially taking a camera spot from Turner broadcasting and that spot will be used for the commentator, who will help define what the competitor is looking at,” Sternberg said. “Just from a pure spectating perspective, that gives the commentators insight onto what the competitors are looking at — maybe even insight into what they could possibly be thinking before they even do it.”
For ELEAGUE, the partnership with Tobii and Alienware came naturally. “None of these were short-term—we didn’t decide to do all of this stuff in June,” Robert Occhialini, Turner Sports’ vice president of esports products and technology, told SportTechie.” According to Occhialini, all three companies met in March and worked out the kinks of integrating Tobii into the existing competitive environment.
The partnership, and Tobii’s technology, also allow fans to see not just what happens in the game, but why it happens.
“Where was he looking? Was he looking to the left of the screen when he got fragged from the right?” Occhialini said. “I think there are axes of understanding on the positive and negative side there…I think creating insight-driven analysis based on data capture will also allow players at home to understand what separates a pro player from them, and they may improve their game.”
No matter what happens with the CS:GO Premier, the eye tracking technology is nascent and has a lot of room for growth. Occhialini thinks it could eventually become a source of real-time data.
“We’re actually really excited about the relationship between Dell Gaming and specifically Alienware, and ELEAGUE,” Sternberg said. “This is just the beginning.”