An Efficient Partitioning Algorithm for Distributed Virtual Environment Systems
IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
A generic proxy system for networked computer games
NetGames '02 Proceedings of the 1st workshop on Network and system support for games
The impact of DHT routing geometry on resilience and proximity
Proceedings of the 2003 conference on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communications
Zoned federation of game servers: a peer-to-peer approach to scalable multi-player online games
Proceedings of 3rd ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games
Scalable peer-to-peer networked virtual environment
Proceedings of 3rd ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games
The social side of gaming: a study of interaction patterns in a massively multiplayer online game
CSCW '04 Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work
Locality aware dynamic load management for massively multiplayer games
Proceedings of the tenth ACM SIGPLAN symposium on Principles and practice of parallel programming
NOSSDAV '05 Proceedings of the international workshop on Network and operating systems support for digital audio and video
Dynamic microcell assignment for massively multiplayer online gaming
NetGames '05 Proceedings of 4th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games
Game traffic analysis: an MMORPG perspective
Computer Networks: The International Journal of Computer and Telecommunications Networking
Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games
Secure Referee Selection for Fair and Responsive Peer-to-Peer Gaming
Proceedings of the 22nd Workshop on Principles of Advanced and Distributed Simulation
Hack, slash, and chat: a study of players' behavior and communication in MMORPGs
Proceedings of the 8th Annual Workshop on Network and Systems Support for Games
Why MMORPG players do what they do: relating motivations to action categories
International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication
Traffic modeling of player action categories in a MMORPG
Proceedings of the 4th International ICST Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques
MMORPG player behavior model based on player action categories
Proceedings of the 10th Annual Workshop on Network and Systems Support for Games
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While psychologists analyze network game-playing behavior in terms of players' social interaction and experience, understanding user behavior is equally important to network researchers, because how users act determines how well network systems, such as online games, perform. To gain a better understanding of patterns of player interaction and their implications for game design, we analyze a 1, 356-million-packet trace of ShenZhou Online, a mid-sized commercial MMORPG. This work is dedicated to draw out hints and implications of player interaction patterns, which is inferred from network-level traces, for online games. We find that the dispersion of players in a virtual world is heavy-tailed, which implies that static and fixed-size partitioning of game worlds is inadequate. Neighbors and teammates tend to be closer to each other in network topology. This property is an advantage, because message delivery between the hosts of interacting players can be faster than between those of unrelated players. In addition, the property can make game playing fairer, since interacting players tend to have similar latencies to their servers. We also find that participants who have a higher degree of social interaction tend to play much longer, and players who are closer in network topology tend to team up for longer periods. This suggests that game designers could increase the "stickiness" of games by encouraging, or even forcing, team playing.