Abstract

As online connectivity becomes more important to interactive media, dealing with network latency has become increasingly important. This project was designed to study the validity of a taxonomy to classify the impact of player actions with latency. We utilized a commercial game to simulate latency in a first person shooter match where participants competed against a computer controlled opponent. The participants utilized three different weapons: a shotgun, a rocket launcher, and a sniper rifle. Each weapon was designed to embody different characteristics of the taxonomy axes: precision, impact, and deadline. The participants used each weapon against the opponent at differing amounts of latency. Analysis of the data shows that lower precision weapons like the rocket launchers and shotguns were significantly less accurate when latency was increased, while high precision weapons such as sniper rifles dealt less damage as latency increased. Overall, we partially confirmed the validity of a previous taxonomy. Our findings fit the taxonomy in regards to the impact of damage and the weapon's shooting speed on a player's performance but the results were inconclusive on other aspects of player actions. Future research would benefit from utilizing a much larger, more skilled participant pool, and finding or creating software that more robustly simulates playing games online with varying levels of latency.

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