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Latency and User Behaviour on a Multiplayer Game Server

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Networked Group Communication (NGC 2001)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2233))

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Abstract

Multiplayer online games represent one of the most popular forms of networked group communication on the Internet today. We have been running a server for a first-person shooter game, Half-Life. In this paper we analyse some of the delay characteristics of different players on the server and present some interim results. We find that whilst network delay has some effect on players’ behaviour, this is outweighed by application-level or exogenous effects. Players seem to be remarkably tolerant of network conditions, and absolute delay bounds appear to be less important than the relative delay between players.

The author is funded by a Hewlett-Packard EPSRC CASE award.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University College London, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT, London, UK

    Tristan Henderson

Authors
  1. Tristan Henderson
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, William Gates Building, J.J.Thomson Avenue, CB3 0FD, Cambridge, UK

    Jon Crowcroft

  2. Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies, Room 4F-513,101 Crawfords Corner Road, 07733, Holmdel, NJ, USA

    Markus Hofmann

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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Henderson, T. (2001). Latency and User Behaviour on a Multiplayer Game Server. In: Crowcroft, J., Hofmann, M. (eds) Networked Group Communication. NGC 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2233. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45546-9_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45546-9_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-42824-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45546-2

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