Cascading impact of lag on Quality of Experience in cooperative multiplayer games

Abstract

Playing online games should be fun. One of the primary causes of player frustration in online games is lag, or delay in exchange of game state data [1]- [8]. Current lag mitigation strategies are based on the assumption that a player's Quality of Experience (QoE) is influenced only by her own lag [9]- [12]. We systematically show that this assumption is incorrect, because in an online cooperative game the change in QoE of one player due to their lag can have a cascading effect on the QoE of the other players. Our results are obtained through a novel experimental framework based on previous QoE and online game research.Understanding a player's QoE as a cascade function that includes other players' network conditions provides valuable information for designing cooperative online games. Based on our observations, we recommend changes to the current approach to lag mitigation in cooperative games. We argue that the primary objective of lag mitigation should not be to reduce the lag of all players. Instead the primary objective should be to reduce the lag of the most lagged player within each cooperative group.

A Survey and Taxonomy of Latency Compensation Techniques for Network Computer Games

“…Sheldon et al [125] show some aspects of play in the real-time strategy game Warcraft 3 are not afected by even a second of latency. Howard et al [64] indicate that cooperation in the role-playing game Mass Efect 3 can be afected by latency of a teammate due to cascading efects on the game outcome.…”

Enhancing the quality of experience of Arduino-based multiplayer online game using MQTT server

“…Kinerja dan pengaruh lag dalam permainan online multiplayer yang dapat menimbulkan QoE yang buruk pada pemain telah dinyatakan dalam [13]. Lag dari satu pemain tidak hanya berdampak pada pemain tersebut, namun berdampak juga ke pemain yang lain sehingga menimbulkan QoE yang buruk pada seluruh pemain.…”

“…Selain HTTP dan MQTT dalam [8]- [10], beragam protokol, seperti Rabbit-MQ, AMQP, dan CoAP dalam [11], [12], dapat diimplementasikan dan dianalisis perbandingan QoE-nya untuk permainan tersebut. Skenario pengujian berupa implementasi delay buatan pada MQTT juga dapat dilakukan untuk menganalisis pengaruhnya terhadap pengalaman permain seperti dalam [13], [14]. Pengujian di kondisi jaringan yang lebih bervariasi, seperti mobile hotspot, public internet access, atau jaringan internet manapun yang digunakan oleh banyak pengguna.…”

Survey of End-to-End Mobile Network Measurement Testbeds, Tools, and Services

“…To cope with the complexity of mobile network performance dynamics, developers need to measure and incorporate mitigation strategies in their applications. Although not all mobile applications are equally affected by poor network performance, the responsiveness of network applications such as games, interactive video, and, to a lesser extent, in-car navigation and augmented reality requires low latency, stable bandwidth, or both [24]. To improve application responsiveness when latency is high, developers might redesign application communication protocols and message structures to pack more data in fewer round trips between mobile clients and backend servers [25].…”