Abstract

Due to the increasing popularity of thin client systems for gaming, it is important to understand the effects of different network conditions on users. This paper describes our experiments to determine the effects of latency on player performance and quality of experience (QoE). For our experiments, we collected player scores and subjective ratings from users as they played short game sessions with different amounts of additional latency. We found that QoE ratings and player scores decrease linearly as latency is added. For every 100 ms of added latency, players reduced their QoE ratings by 14% on average. This information may provide insight to game designers and network engineers on how latency affects the users, allowing them to optimize their systems while understanding the effects on their clients. This experiment design should also prove useful to thin client researchers looking to conduct user studies while controlling not only latency, but also other network conditions like packet loss.

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