Reducing the negative effects of inconsistencies in networked games

Abstract

Networking is a key component of digital games, with many featuring multiplayer modes and online components. The time required to transmit data over a network can lead to usability problems such as inconsistency between players' views of a virtual world, and race conditions when resolving players' actions. Implementing a good consistency maintenance scheme is therefore critical to gameplay. Sadly, problems with consistency remain a regular occurrence in multiplayer games, causing player game states to diverge. There is little guidance available on how these inconsistencies impact player experience, nor on how best to repair them when they arise. We investigate the effectiveness of different strategies for repairing inconsistencies, and show that the three most important factors affecting the detection of corrections are the player's locus of attention, the smoothness of the correction and the duration of the correction.