Validation of a Taxonomy for Player Actions with Latency and Network Games

This project was designed to study the validity of a taxonomy to classify the impact of player actions with latency. We utilized a commercial game to simulate latency in a first person shooter match where participants competed against a computer controlled opponent. The participants utilized three different weapons: a shotgun, a rocket launcher, and a sniper rifle. Each weapon was designed to embody different characteristics of the taxonomy axes: precision, impact, and deadline. Overall, we partially confirmed the validity of a previous taxonomy. Our findings fit the taxonomy in regards to the impact of damage and the weapon’s shooting speed on a player’s performance but the results were inconclusive on other aspects of player actions

Qualitative Evaluation of Latency and Packet Loss in a Cloud-based Games

On-demand multimedia services are more popularthan ever and continue to grow. Consumers can now streammusic, movies, television, and video games at the push of abutton. Such services typically require a minimum connectionspeed to support streaming. However, transient network effectssuch as packet loss and delay variation can play a crucial role indetermining the user quality of experience (QoE) in streamingmultimedia systems. This paper will seek to establish thesubjective impact of negative network effects on the userexperience of a popular cloud-based on-demand video gameservice

Managing Network Delay for Browser Multiplayer Games

Latency is one of the key performance elements affecting the quality of experience (QoE) in computer games. Latency in the context of games can be defined as the time between the user input and the result on the screen. In order for the QoE to be satisfactory the game needs to be able to react fast enough to player input. In networked multiplayer games, latency is composed of network delay and local delays. Some major sources of network delay are queuing delay and head-of-line (HOL) blocking delay. Network delay in the Internet can be even in the order of seconds. In this thesis we discuss what feasible networking solutions exist for browser multiplayer games. We conduct a literature study to analyze the Differentiated Services architecture, some salient Active Queue Management (AQM) algorithms (RED, PIE, CoDel and FQ-CoDel), the Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) concept and network protocols for web browser (WebSocket, QUIC and WebRTC). RED, PIE and CoDel as single-queue implementations would be sub-optimal for providing low latency to game traffic. FQ-CoDel is a multi-queue AQM and provides flow separation that is able to prevent queue-building bulk transfers from notably hampering latency-sensitive flows. WebRTC Data-Channel seems promising for games since it can be used for sending arbitrary application data and it can avoid HOL blocking. None of the network protocols, however, provide completely satisfactory support for the transport needs of multiplayer games: WebRTC is not designed for client-server connections, QUIC is not designed for traffic patterns typical for multiplayer games and WebSocket would require parallel connections to mitigate the effects of HOL blocking

Analysis domain model for shared virtual environments

The field of shared virtual environments, which also encompasses online games and social 3D environments, has a system landscape consisting of multiple solutions that share great functional overlap. However, there is little system interoperability between the different solutions. A shared virtual environment has an associated problem domain that is highly complex raising difficult challenges to the development process, starting with the architectural design of the underlying system. This paper has two main contributions. The first contribution is a broad domain analysis of shared virtual environments, which enables developers to have a better understanding of the whole rather than the part(s). The second contribution is a reference domain model for discussing and describing solutions - the Analysis Domain Model

Inter-Destination Multimedia Synchronization; Schemes, Use Cases and Standardization

Traditionally, the media consumption model has been a passive and isolated activity. However, the advent of media streaming technologies, interactive social applications, and synchronous communications, as well as the convergence between these three developments, point to an evolution towards dynamic shared media experiences. In this new model, geographically distributed groups of consumers, independently of their location and the nature of their end-devices, can be immersed in a common virtual networked environment in which they can share multimedia services, interact and collaborate in real-time within the context of simultaneous media content consumption. In most of these multimedia services and applications, apart from the well-known intra and inter-stream synchronization techniques that are important inside the consumers playout devices, also the synchronization of the playout processes between several distributed receivers, known as multipoint, group or Inter-destination multimedia synchronization (IDMS), becomes essential. Due to the increasing popularity of social networking, this type of multimedia synchronization has gained in popularity in recent years. Although Social TV is perhaps the most prominent use case in which IDMS is useful, in this paper we present up to 19 use cases for IDMS, each one having its own synchronization requirements. Different approaches used in the (recent) past by researchers to achieve IDMS are described and compared. As further proof of the significance of IDMS nowadays, relevant organizations (such as ETSI TISPAN and IETF AVTCORE Group) efforts on IDMS standardization (in which authors have been and are participating actively), defining architectures and protocols, are summarized.This work has been financed, partially, by Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (UPV), under its R&D Support Program in PAID-05-11-002-331 Project and in PAID-01-10, and by TNO, under its Future Internet Use Research & Innovation Program. The authors also want to thank Kevin Gross for providing some of the use cases included in Sect. 1.2.Montagud, M.; Boronat Segui, F.; Stokking, H.; Van Brandenburg, R. (2012). Inter-Destination Multimedia Synchronization; Schemes, Use Cases and Standardization. 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Player Emotional Behavior Dependency on Fair Video Game Design Factors and External Conditions

Käesolev bakalaureusetöö kirjeldab seda, miks videomängude mängijad muutuvad mõnikord mängides agressiivseks ja vihaseks ning pakub sellele probleemile lahendust action žanri videomängude puhul, kus mängijad mängivad üksteise vastu. Kaotamine nendes mängudes võib muuta mängijaid vihasteks ja agressiivseteks, mille üheks põhjuseks on mängijate kahtlus, et neid ei kohelda võrdselt ja teine võidab pettusega või talle mängu poolt loodud eelissituatsiooni abil.Töös loodi action žanri katseline videomäng, mis pakub võrdseid võimalusi võitmiseks mõlemale poolele. Töö käigus korraldati uuring, kus katseisikud mängisid seda mängu ja pärast täitsid uuringu ankeedi. Selgus, et ausad mängu disaini faktorid ja välistingimused mõjuvad positiivselt mängijate emotsioonidele.The current thesis describes the problem of anger and aggression in video games and proposes a solution specifically for action video games where players oppose each other. Losing at those games may cause players to become angry or aggressive. As one of the factors, such anger comes from a feeling of being cheated on.During the thesis, an action genre video game that provides equal opportunities for the opposing sides for winning was developed. An experiment which consists of playing the developed game and filling out the questionnaire by a specific group of people was conducted. Participants of the experiment were treated equally regarding game-external conditions. It turned out that fair video game design factors and external conditions have a positive influence on player emotions

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Metaverse

Non peer reviewe