Title: Discovering First Person Shooter game servers online: techniques and challenges

Authors: Grenville Armitage

Addresses: Center for Advanced Internet Architectures, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

Abstract: Multiplayer online first person shooter games are usually client-server based. This paper reviews networking issues and tradeoffs associated with common techniques used to discover playable game servers. ISPs, game hosting companies and private enthusiasts typically host game servers and publishers host |master servers|. To seek available game servers clients query the master servers for lists of currently active game servers then probe the list for status information and latency estimates. Slow probing irritates players, whilst probing too quickly congests consumer|s links (inflating latency estimates). A game server|s inbound probe traffic reveals the topological distributions of likely player populations.

Keywords: online games; server discovery; FPS games; first person shooter games; computer games; consumer networking; tradeoffs; game servers; status information; latency estimates; player populations.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAMC.2008.022223

International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication, 2008 Vol.2 No.4, pp.402 - 414

Published online: 23 Dec 2008 *

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