Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/4308

Download PDF (Published version) (Adobe Acrobat PDF, -1 bytes)

Title

An experimental estimation of latency sensitivity in multiplayer Quake 3

Author(s)

Armitage, Grenville J.

Abstract

Quantifying the latency sensitivity of potential customers/players is critical for Internet-based game providers when planning the network placement of their game servers. In early 2001 we placed two Quake 3 servers at different locations on the Internet, and instrumented them to gather median latency information on every player who played over a multimonth period. Comparison of server logfiles showed an active yet distinct player population on each server, and the median latency distributions suggest players actively prefer Quake 3 servers less than 150 to 180 milliseconds from the player's location. Quake 3 is often played as a multiplayer, Internetbased, highly interactive “first person shooter” game. Although Quake 3 is nowhere near as popular as games such as Halflife: CounterStrike, we believe our results provide a useful ballpark indicator of latency sensitivity for this class of highly interactive online games.

Publication type

Conference paper

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology. School of Biophysical Science and Electrical Engineering

Source

Proceedings 11th IEEE International Conference on Networks/ICON 2003, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 28 September - 1 October 2003, pp 137-141

Publication year

2003

Publisher

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

ISSN

1531-2216

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICON.2003.1266180

Copyright

Copyright © 2003 IEEE. Published version of the paper reproduced here in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.

Full text

Peer reviewed