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Impact of Latency on the Player in Online Games

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Impact of Latency on the Player in Online Games Impact of Latency on The Player in Online Games Ian McNeil Matthew Beyler Advisor: Mark Claypool 1 Abstract As online gaming grows in popularity, it becomes increasingly important to recognize and assess the impact of high latency on player performance and overall game satisfaction, as well as the efficacy of methods to deal with them. In this study, we created a system to test the impact of two popular latency compensation systems (time warp and prediction) at varying degrees of latency upon player performance and enjoyment of the game. It was found that both time warp and prediction improved player performance and that time warp was more effective than prediction. 2 Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 2 List of Figures .................................................................................................................................. 5 List of Tables ................................................................................................................................... 5 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 6 1.1 Hypotheses ............................................................................................................................ 8 1.2 Latency Compensation Techniques .................................................................................... 10 1.2.1 Prediction ......................................................................................................................... 10 1.2.2 Time Warp ........................................................................................................................ 13 2 Previous Studies ......................................................................................................................... 16 3 Program Description ................................................................................................................ 18 3.1 Server ................................................................................................................................. 19 3.2 Bot ....................................................................................................................................... 20 3.3 Client ................................................................................................................................... 22 3.4 Time Warp .......................................................................................................................... 24 3.5 Prediction ........................................................................................................................... 25 3.6 Data Rates .......................................................................................................................... 26 4 Study Description ..................................................................................................................... 27 4.1 Test bed .............................................................................................................................. 27 4.2 Program Properties ........................................................................................................... 28 4.2.1 Independent Variables ............................................................................................... 28 4.2.2 Constants ..................................................................................................................... 29 4.3 Pre-Test Questions ............................................................................................................ 31 4.4 Post-Test Questions ........................................................................................................... 33 5 Analysis ...................................................................................................................................... 34 5.1 Pre-Test Questions .............................................................................................................. 34 5.2 Score .................................................................................................................................... 35 5.3 Targets Hit ........................................................................................................................... 36 3 5.4 Accuracy .............................................................................................................................. 37 5.5 Score Per Target .................................................................................................................. 39 5.6 Post-Test Questions ............................................................................................................ 40 6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 42 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................. 44 4 List of Figures Figure 1: A situation where prediction improves player performance.. ...................................... 11 Figure 2-A situation where compensation works poorly ............................................................. 13 Figure 3: Effect of compensation in Counter Strike. ..................................................................... 15 Figure 4: Screenshot of a game in progress .................................................................................. 23 Figure 5: Starting Page of Website ............................................................................................... 28 Figure 6: Webpage to collect answers to pre-test questions ....................................................... 32 Figure 7: Webpage to collect answers to post-test questions ..................................................... 33 Figure 8 : Average score per trial vs. Latency for each compensation technique ........................ 35 Figure 9: Average targets hit per trial vs. Latency for each compensation technique ................. 37 Figure 10: Average accuracy vs. Latency for each compensation technique ............................... 38 Figure 11: Average Score per target vs. Latency for each compensation technique ................... 40 List of Tables Table 1: Results of Pre-Test Questions ......................................................................................... 34 Table 2: t-test results for score ..................................................................................................... 36 Table 3: t-test results for targets hit ............................................................................................. 37 Table 4: t-test results for Accuracy ............................................................................................... 38 Table 5: t-test results for score per target .................................................................................... 40 Table 6: Results of Post-Test Questions on gameplay quality ...................................................... 41 Table 7: Results of Post-Test Questions on enjoyment ................................................................ 41 5 1 Introduction The growing popularity of computer games and more specifically online multiplayer computer games has led to an interest in studying the effects of latency upon the users of these systems and the efficacy of methods of compensating for this latency. Latency can have a large effect on the end user’s experience in online computer games. Latency causes the user's commands to be delayed so that by the time the command is received and executed by the server the game state has changed. The delay between the server and client also means that the user's view of the game world is out of date, hampering the user’s ability to make proper decisions in the game. An example of this would be a user shooting at someone in a first person shooter and by the time the shot has been fired the intended target has gone around a corner. This delay not only has a negative impact on the user's performance, but also on the user’s game experience. Many different methods of compensating for this delay have been developed in order to mitigate the effect on gameplay. The effectiveness of these options can be measured by adjusting latency and measuring the quality of the resulting game play, either by some metric such as score or by asking for feedback about the user’s experience. Some of these include prediction of future game states and executing user actions as if the action happened when sent by the user rather than when received by the server. By predicting future game states, the client can display a more accurate representation of the game state on the server, allowing the 6 user to make more informed decisions. For example, if a projectile is shot, its movement is predictable so the client can display its location properly even if the current game state is out of date. This can be applied to more complex movement but there is the possibility for some error in which case warping can occur, in which objects teleport to their correct locations regardless of where they previously appeared to be. Another method is time warp, in which commands are executed as if they were received when they were sent by the client, and then resolve
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