Players of first-person shooter (FPS) games, such as Counter-strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), seek low latencies in order to play well and have fun. Even network latencies as small as 10 milliseconds may decrease accuracy, score, and Quality of Experience (QoE), degredations that may be exacerbated for some weapons. This paper presents results from 40+ person user study that measures the impact of network latencies on players for the FPS game CS:GO. We setup a testbed where participants played 20+ rounds of CS:GO with controlled amounts of network latency with either a mid-range, rapid fire, high-precision weapon (an AK-47 assault rifle) or a close-range, slow fire, lower-precision weapon (a Nova shotgun). Analysis of the results shows even network latencies under 100 milliseconds degrade player performance (accuracy and score), avatar movements, and QoE, with the impact on player performance more pronounced for the assault rifle compared to the shotgun.

Materials:

• Paper: pdf (final copy)
• Paper: pdf (TR draft)
• Presentation slides: pptx

See also:

• Shengmei Liu, Atsuo Kuwahara, James Scovell, Jamie Sherman, and Mark Claypool. The Effects of Network Latency on Competitive First-Person Shooter Game Players, In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX), Virtual Conference, June 14-17, 2021. Online at: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/csgo-net-21/

• Shengmei Liu, Atsuo Kuwahara, James Scovell, Jamie Sherman, and Mark Claypool. L33t or N00b? How Player Skill Alters the Effects of Network Latency on First Person Shooter Game Players, In Proceedings of the Game Systems Workshop (GameSys), Istanbul, Turkey, September 28 - October 1, 2021. Online at: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/csgo-skill-21/

• Shengmei Liu, Atsuo Kuwahara, James Scovell, Jamie Sherman, and Mark Claypool. Lower is Better? The Effects of Local Latencies on Competitive First-Person Shooter Game Players, In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Virtual Conference, May 8-13, 2021. Online at: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/csgo-lag-21/

• Shengmei Liu, Atsuo Kuwahara, James Scovell, Jamie Sherman, and Mark Claypool. Comparing the Effects of Network Latency versus Local Latency on Competitive First Person Shooter Game Players, In Proceedings of the ACM Esports and High Performance HCI Workshop (EHPHCI), Virtual Conference, May 8, 2021. Online at: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/net-local-21/

• Tom Beigbeder, Rory Coughlan, Corey Lusher, John Plunkett, Emmanuel Agu, and Mark Claypool. The Effects of Loss and Latency on User Performance in Unreal Tournament 2003, In Proceedings of ACM Network and System Support for Games Workshop (NetGames), Portland, Oregon, USA, September 2004. Online at: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/ut2003/