Computer gaming systems have evolved to increase user interaction and provide a more active gaming experience. As such, gaming has become a more social activity bringing multiple players together. The excitement that several players may exude while playing a game may entice more to join in on the fun. One prior approach to allowing new players to join a game involves pausing or restarting the game in order to add another game player. The new player typically signs in by typing a player name and password into the computer gaming system, for example, using an onscreen keyboard manipulated by a game controller. However, pausing or restarting and typing in such information interrupts the flow of the game, which is undesirable to those players that are already involved in the game play. Further, in computer gaming systems that utilize natural user input via body movements, the players may not handle controllers to operate such onscreen keyboards, which might make onscreen input time consuming or difficult.
The general idea of using biometric identification for access to a gaming system has been proposed; however, in practice many challenges exist to the adoption of such techniques. For example, one serious drawback of current face recognition techniques is that they are sensitive to ambient lighting conditions, resulting in high error rates in variable and unpredictable lighting conditions. This frustrates the adoption of such biometric identification techniques for gaming systems that are used in home environments, for example, due to the highly variable lighting conditions found inside such environments.