The effects of latency on online madden NFL football

ABSTRACT

With growth in interactive network games comes increased importance in a better understanding of the effects of latency on game performance. While previous work has measured the effects of latency on first-person shooters and real-time strategy games, there has been no systematic investigation of the effects of latency on sports games. In this work, we study the effects of latency on online Madden NFL football, one of the most popular online sports games, through a series of carefully designed experiments in which we systematically control latency between players. Our experiments illustrate the mechanisms Madden NFL uses to compensate for latency. Our user studies show there is little impact from latency on user performance in Madden NFL over typical low Internet latencies. However, for latencies higher than 500 ms, there is a significant impact on user performance, degrading performance by almost 30%. Our network measurements show periodic data rates during game-play with significant command aggregation at higher latencies.

REFERENCES

• 1: G. Armitage. An Experimental Estimation of Latency Sensitivity in Multiplayer Quake 3. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Networks (ICON), Sept. 2003.
• 2: Y. W. Bernier. Latency Compensating Methods in Client/Server In-game Protocol Design and Optimization. In Proceedings of the Game Developers Conf., Feb. 2001.
• 3: P. Bettner and M. Terrano. 1500 Archers on a 28.8: Network Programming in Age of Empires and Beyond. Gamasutra, Mar. 2001.
• 4: K. Dean. Academic Games Can be Fun. Wired News, Nov. 2003.
• 5: ESA. Computer and Video Game Software Sales Break $7 Billion in 2003, Jan. 2004. Press Release.
• 6: Tristan Henderson, Latency and User Behaviour on a Multiplayer Game Server, Proceedings of the Third International COST264 Workshop on Networked Group Communication, p.1-13, November 07-09, 2001
• 7: S. Jaiswal, G. Iannaccone, C. Diot, J. Kurose, and D. Towsley. Inferring TCP Connection Characteristics Through Passive Measurements. In Proceedings of IEEE Infocom, Apr. 2004.
• 8: S. McCreary and k claffy. Trends in Wide Area IP Traffic Patterns: A View from Ames Internet Exchange. In Proceedings of ITC Specialist Seminar on Measurement and Modeling of IP Traffic, Sept. 2000.
• 9: Y.-S. Ng. Designing Fast-Action Games for the Internet. Gamasutra, Sept. 1997.
• 10: J. Nichols and M. Claypool. The Effects of Latency on Online Madden NFL Football. Technical Report TR-04-06, CS Department, WPI, Mar. 2004.
• 11: Lothar Pantel , Lars C. Wolf, On the impact of delay on real-time multiplayer games, Proceedings of the 12th international workshop on Network and operating systems support for digital audio and video, May 12-14, 2002, Miami, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/507670.507674]
• 12: Christian Schaefer , Thomas Enderes , Hartmut Ritter , Marina Zitterbart, Subjective quality assessment for multiplayer real-time games, Proceedings of the 1st workshop on Network and system support for games, p.74-78, April 16-17, 2002, Bruanschweig, Germany [doi>10.1145/566500.566511]
• 13: Nathan Sheldon , Eric Girard , Seth Borg , Mark Claypool , Emmanuel Agu, The effect of latency on user performance in Warcraft III, Proceedings of the 2nd workshop on Network and system support for games, p.3-14, May 22-23, 2003, Redwood City, California [doi>10.1145/963900.963901]
• 14: J. Smed, T. Kaukoranta, and H. Hakonen. Aspects of Networking in Multiplayer Computer Games. The Electronic Library, 20(2):87--97, 2002.
• 15: The Entertainment Software Association. Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry, 2003. Press Release. http://www.theesa.com/EF2003.pdf.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.m Miscellaneous

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors, Performance

Keywords:
latency compensation, network games