Challenges for Network Computer Games

Interactive entertainment and specifically computer games has grown into a multi-billion industry in the last few years and continues to grow. This expansion has fueled a number of technologies and led to a wide variety of innovations. Current graphics card have moved from becoming part of the motherboard to be independent peripherals often as expensive as the rest of the computer. With graphics now reaching almost lifelike fidelity, the industry is looking at the next set of innovations that is going to differentiate their product. Part of this innovation will be in the area of artificial intelligence with increasingly humanlike characters, but a more important component will be through advances in network games. While most games already allow the users to play against other players over the internet and some games are specifically built as multiplayer games, they only use the network in a limited manner. The number of web pages, mailing lists and chat rooms devoted to virtual communities centered on specific games is an indication of the size of these communities. The underlying network technologies often limit what types of games are possible. We examine the challenges faced by current games, describe the current workarounds commonly used in the industry and look at the challenges that game developers, users, internet service providers, internet architects and protocol developers face to support this expanding and innovative industry.