The Cheating Assemblage in MMORPGs: Toward a sociotechnical description of cheating

This paper theoretically and empirically explores cheating in MMORPGs. This paper conceptualises cheating in MMORPGs as a sociotechnical practice which draws upon a non-linear assemblage of human actors and non-human artefacts, in which the practice of cheating is the result or the outcome of an assemblage. We draw upon the assemblage conceptualizations proposed in [16] and [8] and on empirical data taken from a pilot study we have conducted during the period September-November 2008 and from an ethnography we are conducting in the MMORPG Tibia (http://www.tibia.com) since January 2009. This game in particular was chosen because CipSoft, the company that develops the game, launched an anti-cheating campaign at the beginning of 2009

Re-engineering jake2 to work on a grid using the GridGain Middleware

With the advent of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), engineers and designers of games came across with many questions that needed to be answered such as, for example, "how to allow a large amount of clients to play simultaneously on the same server?", "how to guarantee a good quality of service (QoS) to a great number of clients?", "how many resources will be necessary?", "how to optimize these resources to the maximum?". A possible answer to these questions relies on the usage of grid computing. Taking into account the parallel and distributed nature of grid computing, we can say that grid computing allows for more scalability in terms of a growing number of players, guarantees shorter communication time between clients and servers, and allows for a better resource management and usage (e.g., memory, CPU, core balancing usage, etc.) than the traditional serial computing model. However, the main focus of this thesis is not about grid computing. Instead, this thesis describes the re-engineering process of an existing multiplayer computer game, called Jake2, by transforming it into a MMOG, which is then put to run on a grid

Analyzing the effect of tcp and server population on massively multiplayer games

Many Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) use TCP flows for communication between the server and the game clients. The utilization of TCP, which was not initially designed for (soft) real-time services, has many implications for the competing traffic flows. In this paper we present a series of studies which explore the competition between MMORPG and other traffic flows. For that aim, we first extend a source-based traffic model, based on player’s activities during the day, to also incorporate the impact of the number of players sharing a server (server population) on network traffic. Based on real traffic traces, we statistically model the influence of the variation of the server’s player population on the network traffic, depending on the action categories (i.e., types of in-game player behaviour). Using the developed traffic model we prove that while server population only modifies specific action categories, this effect is significant enough to be observed on the overall traffic. We find that TCP Vegas is a good option for competing flows in order not to throttle the MMORPG flows and that TCP SACK is more respectful with game flows than other TCP variants, namely, Tahoe, Reno, and New Reno. Other tests show that MMORPG flows do not significantly reduce their sending window size when competing against UDP flows. Additionally, we study the effect of RTT unfairness between MMORPG flows, showing that it is less important than in the case of network-limited TCP flows

Reducing the effect of network delay on tightly-coupled interaction

Tightly-coupled interaction is shared work in which each person’s actions immediately and continuously influence the actions of others. Tightly-coupled interaction is a hallmark of expert behaviour in face-to-face activity, but becomes extremely difficult to accomplish in distributed groupware. The main cause of this difficulty is network delay – even amounts as small as 100ms – that disrupts people’s ability to synchronize their actions with another person. To reduce the effects of delay on tightly-coupled interaction, I introduce a new technique called Feedback-Feedthrough Synchronization (FFS). FFS causes visual feedback from an action to occur at approximately the same time for both the local and the remote person, preventing one person from getting ahead of the other in the coordinated interaction. I tested the effects of FFS on group performance in several delay conditions, and my study showed that FFS substantially improved users’ performance: accuracy was significantly improved at all levels of delay, and without noticeable increase in perceived effort or frustration. Techniques like FFS that support the requirements of tightly-coupled interaction provide new means for improving the usability of groupware that operates on real-world networks

Analyzing the Effect of TCP and Server Population on Massively Multiplayer Games

Many Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) use TCP flows for communication between the server and the game clients. The utilization of TCP, which was not initially designed for (soft) real-time services, has many implications for the competing traffic flows. In this paper we present a series of studies which explore the competition between MMORPG and other traffic flows. For that aim, we first extend a source-based traffic model, based on player’s activities during the day, to also incorporate the impact of the number of players sharing a server (server population) on network traffic. Based on real traffic traces, we statistically model the influence of the variation of the server’s player population on the network traffic, depending on the action categories (i.e., types of in-game player behaviour). Using the developed traffic model we prove that while server population only modifies specific action categories, this effect is significant enough to be observed on the overall traffic. We find that TCP Vegas is a good option for competing flows in order not to throttle the MMORPG flows and that TCP SACK is more respectful with game flows than other TCP variants, namely, Tahoe, Reno, and New Reno. Other tests show that MMORPG flows do not significantly reduce their sending window size when competing against UDP flows. Additionally, we study the effect of RTT unfairness between MMORPG flows, showing that it is less important than in the case of network-limited TCP flows

"We Will Always Be One Step Ahead of Them" A Case Study on the Economy of Cheating in MMORPGs

Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) are a sub-sector of virtual worlds that share with other worlds the characteristics of both complex technological systems and complex societies. The success of several MMORPGs makes them a vibrant area for research from different points of view, including their economic aspects (Castronova, 2005). Our research is mainly concerned with the practice of cheating in MMORPGs and its consequences. In this paper we explore the economic dimensions of cheating in MMORPGs as they relate to the business activities of companies that offer cheating software, in particular programs called 'bots'. Specifically, we address the following question: "How do cheating practices shape economic interactions around MMORPGs?" We characterize the economy of cheating (as it is carried out by cheating companies) as an answer to breakdowns in the relationship between cheaters and cheating companies (Winograd and Flores, 1987; Akrich, 1992), which involves both learning and innovation processes. In order to answer our question we present a case study of the Tibia (http://www.tibia.com) and an ongoing anti-cheating campaign. In the conclusion of the paper we provide some general reflections on the relevance of the economy of cheating to Virtual Worlds research

Application of information theory and statistical learning to anomaly detection

In today\u27s highly networked world, computer intrusions and other attacks area constant threat. The detection of such attacks, especially attacks that are new or previously unknown, is important to secure networks and computers. A major focus of current research efforts in this area is on anomaly detection.;In this dissertation, we explore applications of information theory and statistical learning to anomaly detection. Specifically, we look at two difficult detection problems in network and system security, (1) detecting covert channels, and (2) determining if a user is a human or bot. We link both of these problems to entropy, a measure of randomness information content, or complexity, a concept that is central to information theory. The behavior of bots is low in entropy when tasks are rigidly repeated or high in entropy when behavior is pseudo-random. In contrast, human behavior is complex and medium in entropy. Similarly, covert channels either create regularity, resulting in low entropy, or encode extra information, resulting in high entropy. Meanwhile, legitimate traffic is characterized by complex interdependencies and moderate entropy. In addition, we utilize statistical learning algorithms, Bayesian learning, neural networks, and maximum likelihood estimation, in both modeling and detecting of covert channels and bots.;Our results using entropy and statistical learning techniques are excellent. By using entropy to detect covert channels, we detected three different covert timing channels that were not detected by previous detection methods. Then, using entropy and Bayesian learning to detect chat bots, we detected 100% of chat bots with a false positive rate of only 0.05% in over 1400 hours of chat traces. Lastly, using neural networks and the idea of human observational proofs to detect game bots, we detected 99.8% of game bots with no false positives in 95 hours of traces. Our work shows that a combination of entropy measures and statistical learning algorithms is a powerful and highly effective tool for anomaly detection

An Information-Theoretic Framework for Consistency Maintenance in Distributed Interactive Applications

Distributed Interactive Applications (DIAs) enable geographically dispersed users to interact with each other in a virtual environment. A key factor to the success of a DIA is the maintenance of a consistent view of the shared virtual world for all the participants. However, maintaining consistent states in DIAs is difficult under real networks. State changes communicated by messages over such networks suffer latency leading to inconsistency across the application. Predictive Contract Mechanisms (PCMs) combat this problem through reducing the number of messages transmitted in return for perceptually tolerable inconsistency. This thesis examines the operation of PCMs using concepts and methods derived from information theory. This information theory perspective results in a novel information model of PCMs that quantifies and analyzes the efficiency of such methods in communicating the reduced state information, and a new adaptive multiple-model-based framework for improving consistency in DIAs. The first part of this thesis introduces information measurements of user behavior in DIAs and formalizes the information model for PCM operation. In presenting the information model, the statistical dependence in the entity state, which makes using extrapolation models to predict future user behavior possible, is evaluated. The efficiency of a PCM to exploit such predictability to reduce the amount of network resources required to maintain consistency is also investigated. It is demonstrated that from the information theory perspective, PCMs can be interpreted as a form of information reduction and compression. The second part of this thesis proposes an Information-Based Dynamic Extrapolation Model for dynamically selecting between extrapolation algorithms based on information evaluation and inferred network conditions. This model adapts PCM configurations to both user behavior and network conditions, and makes the most information-efficient use of the available network resources. In doing so, it improves PCM performance and consistency in DIAs

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