Networking for Computer Games

Call for Papers

Networking has become the main selling point for computer games: commercial games are expected to support multi-playing and the online game sites aim at supporting an ever increasing number of users. At the same time, new game console releases rely heavily on the appeal of online gaming, and a whole new branch of mobile entertainment has emerged with intention to develop distributed multiplayer games for wireless applications.

Multiplayer computer games require both consistent and responsive networking. Consistency is important for maintaining a similar set of data for all players, whereas responsiveness requires that updates to the data are done as promptly as possible. These two requirements, however, are often contradictory, and solving this consistency-responsiveness dichotomy lies in the heart of real-time interactive networking.

A massively multiplayer game can have tens of thousands simultaneous players from all of over the world, which means that the scalability of the chosen network architecture becomes critical. Moreover, a massive multiplayer game often requires maintaining a persistent game world, where the game progresses around the clock regardless whether a player takes part in it.

As the online gaming has become a more lucrative business, potential financial losses, caused directly or indirectly by cheaters, are now a major concern among the online gaming sites. The range of attacks varies from tampering the network traffic to virtual mobbing, which means that the counter measures against cheating also range from securing the communication to maintaining a fair playground.

This special issue on Networking for Computer Games focuses on the latest research done on networked computer games. The topics to be addressed in this special issue include but are not limited to:

*             Communication, data, and control architectures

*             Latency compensation techniques

*             Persistent game worlds

*             Measuring game traffic

*             Security for computer games

*             Pervasive games

*             Networked virtual environments for games

*             Mixed/Augmented reality games

*             Mobile/Nomadic multiplayer games

*             Consistency maintenance

*              

Authors should follow the International Journal of Computer Games Technology manuscript format described at the journal site http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijcgt/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com, according to the following timetable:

Manuscript Due

February 1, 2008

First Round of Reviews

May 1, 2008

Publication Date

August 1, 2008

Guest Editor:

Jouni Smed, Department of Information Technology, University of Turku, 20014 Turku,Finland

 

 

 

 

 

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