On Latency and Player Actions in Online Games

The growth and penetration of broadband access networks to the home has fueled the growth of online games played over the Internet. As we write this article, it is 5am on a typical weekday morning and Gamespy Arcade reports more than 250,000 players online playing about 75,000 games! This proliferation of online games has been matched by an equivalent growth in both the variety of online games and in the support provided for online players. The spectrum of online games has shifted from a few people collaborating or competing on a Local Area Network (LAN) in first person perspective games such as id’s Doom in the early 1990s, to thousands of players interacting over the Internet in a wide variety of games ranging from first person shooter games and role playing games to strategy and sports games. This escalation in the popularity of online games is also reflected in the correspondingly high number of servers spread across the globe that support and host thousands of players playing these games.