Adaptation to TV delays based on the user behavior towards a cheating-free second screen entertainment

Comunicação apresentada no ICEC, Isip International Conference on Entertainment Computing, 30 setembro a 2 de outubro 2015, Trondheim, NoruegaRecent advances in technology created new opportunities to enhance TV personalization, providing viewers with individualized ways to watch TV and to interact with its content. Second screen applications are promising vehicles to enhance the viewers’ experiences, but researchers need to take into account the effect that the TV delay has on viewers, in particular when watching broadcasted live events. In this paper, we propose a software-based solution to deal with TV delays. It is mainly directed for a gaming context in which the user has the means to control the synchronisation between the second screen application and the TV content. Taking this scenario into account, we implemented a cheating-detection mechanism to cope with the potential exploitation of the system by its users

Ethical Perceptions and Actions in Gaming

The present study explored how individuals perceive actions in gaming that contain ethical components, whether they have ever engaged in those behaviors and how judgments of ethical actions in gaming relate to participant personality. Participants completed a 16-item survey, which measured their perception of the ethics of gaming behaviors, such as buying a hack or lying to another player. Participants were also asked to indicate for each item whether or not they had ever engaged in that behavior. Results indicated that participants were able to judge the ethical level of different gaming behaviors with lying to other players and unauthorized access to servers being rated as most unethical. Furthermore, self-reports of engagement in unethical activities were fairly low. When ethical rating and action scores were correlated with personality characteristics using the Cattell 16PF1, the only correlation to reach significance showed that participants higher in rule consciousness rated the ethical gaming questions as more unethical overall than their less rule-conscious peers. Given the extent and popularity of gaming in today’s world, it is important to understand how individuals perceive the gaming culture. One aspect of this culture that merits further examination is ethical behavior in gaming

Design Issues for Peer-to-Peer Massively Multiplayer Online Games.

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) are increasing in both popularity and scale, and while classical Client/Server (C/S) architectures convey some benefits, they suffer from significant technical and commercial drawbacks. This realisation has sparked intensive research interest in adapting MMOGs to Peer-to-Peer (P2P) architectures. This paper articulates a comprehensive set of six design issues to be addressed by P2P MMOGs, namely Interest Management (IM), game event dissemination, Non-Player Character (NPC) host allocation, game state persistency, cheating mitigation and incentive mechanisms. Design alternatives for each issue are systematically compared, and their interrelationships discussed. We further evaluate how well representative P2P MMOG architectures fulfil the design criteria

Identification and Classification of Player Types in Massive Multiplayer Online Games using Avatar Behavior

The purpose of our research is to develop an improved methodology for classifying players (identifying deviant players such as terrorists) through multivariate analysis of data from avatar characteristics and behaviors in massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs). To build our classification models, we developed three significant enhancements to the standard Generalized Regression Neural Networks (GRNN) modeling method. The first enhancement is a feature selection technique based on GRNNs, allowing us to tailor our feature set to be best modeled by GRNNs. The second enhancement is a hybrid GRNN which allows each feature to be modeled by a GRNN tailored to its data type. The third enhancement is a spread estimation technique for large data sets that is faster than exhaustive searches, yet more accurate than a standard heuristic. We applied our new techniques to a set of data from the MMOG, Everquest II, to identify deviant players (\u27gold farmers\u27). The identification of gold farmers is similar to labeling terrorists in that the ratio of gold farmer to standard player is extremely small, and the in-game behaviors for a gold farmer have detectable differences from a standard player. Our results were promising given the difficulty of the classification process, primarily the extremely unbalanced data set with a small number of observations from the class of interest. As a screening tool our method identifies a significantly reduced set of avatars and associated players with a much improved probability of containing a number of players displaying deviant behaviors. With further efforts at improving computing efficiencies to allow inclusion of additional features and observations with our framework, we expect even better results

Scaffolding Novices to Leverage Auditory Awareness Cues in First-Person Shooters

Today's digital games require the mastery of many different skills. This is accomplished through play itself -- sometimes experientially and other times by using explicit guidance provided by the game designer. Multiplayer games, due to their competitive nature, provide fewer opportunities for designers to guide players into mastering particular skills, and so players must learn and master skills experientially. However, when novices compete against better players -- as they would if they were new to the game -- they can feel overwhelmed by the skill differential. This may hinder the ability of novices to learn experientially, and more importantly, may lead to extended periods of unsatisfying play and missed social play opportunities as they struggle to improve in a competitive context. A game genre that suffers from this problem is the multiplayer first-person shooter (FPS), in which the skill difference between new players and experts who have reached a high level of expertise can be quite large. To succeed in a FPS, players must master a number of skills, the most obvious of which are navigating a complex 3D environment and targeting opponents. To target opponents in a 3D environment, you must also be able to locate them -- a skill known as "opponent location awareness". With the goal of helping novices learn the skill of opponent location awareness, we first conducted an experiment to determine how experts accomplish this important task in multiplayer FPS games. After determining that an understanding of audio cues -- and how to leverage them -- was critical, we designed and evaluated two systems for introducing this skill of locating opponents through audio cues -- an explicit stand-alone training system, and a modified game interface for embedded training. We found that both systems improved accuracy and confidence, but that the explicit training system led to more audio cues being recognized. Our work may help people of disparate skill be able to play together, by scaffolding novices to learn and use a strategy commonly employed by experts

Selected Computing Research Papers Volume 1 June 2012

An Evaluation of Anti-phishing Solutions (Arinze Bona Umeaku) ..................................... 1 A Detailed Analysis of Current Biometric Research Aimed at Improving Online Authentication Systems (Daniel Brown) .............................................................................. 7 An Evaluation of Current Intrusion Detection Systems Research (Gavin Alexander Burns) .................................................................................................... 13 An Analysis of Current Research on Quantum Key Distribution (Mark Lorraine) ............ 19 A Critical Review of Current Distributed Denial of Service Prevention Methodologies (Paul Mains) ............................................................................................... 29 An Evaluation of Current Computing Methodologies Aimed at Improving the Prevention of SQL Injection Attacks in Web Based Applications (Niall Marsh) .............. 39 An Evaluation of Proposals to Detect Cheating in Multiplayer Online Games (Bradley Peacock) ............................................................................................................... 45 An Empirical Study of Security Techniques Used In Online Banking (Rajinder D G Singh) .......................................................................................................... 51 A Critical Study on Proposed Firewall Implementation Methods in Modern Networks (Loghin Tivig) .................................................................................................... 5

Player Balancing for FIrst-Person Shooter Games

When player skill levels differ widely in a competitive First-Person Shooter (FPS) game, enjoyment suffers: weaker players become frustrated and stronger players become less engaged. Player balancing techniques attempt to assist the weaker player and make games more competitive, but these techniques have limitations for deployment when skill levels vary substantially. In this thesis, we developed new player balancing schemes to deal with a range of FPS skill difference, and tested these techniques in a series of five studies using a commercial-quality FPS game developed with the UDK engine. Our results showed that our balancing techniques (Combo and Delay) are extremely effective at balancing, even for players with large skill differences. These techniques also led to higher enjoyment of the game by players of all skill levels. Our studies are the first to show that player balancing can work well in realistic FPS games, providing developers with a way to increase the audience for this popular genre. In addition, our results demonstrate the idea that successful balancing is as much about the way the technique is applied as it is about the specific manipulation