The Effects of Network Latency on the Peeker's Advantage in First-person Shooter Games

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The Effects of Network Latency on the Peeker's Advantage in First-person Shooter Games

The Effects of Network Latency on the Peeker's Advantage in First-person Shooter Games

Samin Shahriar Tokey, Zesheng Chen, Colin Mettler, Dexuan Tang, Ben Boudaoud, Joohwan Kim, Josef Spjut and and Mark Claypool

In Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG)

Worcester, MA, USA

May 2024

In first-person shooter (FPS) games, the peeker's advantage is the edge the moving peeker gets when battling a stationary defender at a corner due to network latency. However, confirmation of (the size of) this advantage based on network latency and the distance from the corner has not been studied. This paper assesses the peeker's advantage via two user studies both using an open-source FPS game extended to support two-player networking and a custom map. Users play as both peeker and defender with 3 different corner distances and 3 different network latencies. Analysis of hits, wins, and time-to-damage shows that the advantage for the peeker is impacted more by the defender's latency than the peeker's latency and is lowest when the peeker is nearest the corner. The user study with a tournament setting had quicker and more competitive matches resulting in more combat encounters and closer games than did the traditional user study.

Materials:

Paper: pdf
Slides: (pending)

See also:

Shengmei Liu and Mark Claypool. The Impact of Latency on Target Selection in First-Person Shooter Games, In Proceedings of the ACM Multimedia Systems Conference (MMSys), Vancouver, Canada, June 7-10, 2023. Online at: https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/3d-selection-23/
Xiaokun Xu, Shengmei Liu, and Mark Claypool. The Effects of Network Latency on Counter-strike: Global Offensive Players, In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX), Lippstadt, Germany, September 5-7, 2022. Online at: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/csgo-net-22/
Shengmei Liu and Mark Claypool. The Impact of Latency on Navigation in a First-Person Perspective Game, In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), New Orleans, LA, USA, April 30 - May 5, 2022. Online at: https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/nav-chi-22/
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. 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. 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, OR, USA, September 2004. Online at: http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/ut2003/