Know your Game: A Bottom-Up Approach for Gaming Research

Recent advancements of network architecture such as 5G networks, promise cloud services with strict network constrains a bright future. Cloud gaming as an interactive service has strict end-to-end delay constraints. Therefore, many studies investigated the impact of network parameters such as delay or packet loss on gaming QoE. However, they mostly compared games or genres with each other and neglected the fact even two levels of the same game may have different sensitivity toward delay. In order to understand the game characteristics that cause this difference in delay sensitivity, a bottom-up approach by means of modifiable open source games can be of high value. In this paper we present a game designed to tackle this issue. The game allows to artificially change characteristics of the game, such as the pace and size of objects, and also simulate influences like delay, packet loss or a reduced frame rate. This allows the usage of the game also for crowdsourcing studies, where it is not possible to control the different network conditions of the participants, and to investigate the impact of spatial and temporal accuracy in respect to the sensitivity towards impairments.