Abstract

Humans spend 3 billion hours a week playing video games. While playing, network latencies can cause interaction delay between the client and the server and affect players' gaming experiences. While there is research about the effects of delay on whole network game systems, there is little research on the effects of delays on fundamental player actions. We built two games that isolate two fundamental game actions (shooting and movement) to evaluate how players are affected by network latency. Game statistics were used to evaluate performance, and emotion detection software and a heart rate monitor were used to evaluate players' stress level during gameplay. Our results from a 36-person user study show that players' performance decreases as latency increases and players' stress level increases as latency increases.

Download

• Complete report: pdf