Distinguishing Addiction From High Engagement

In the basis of analysis of education potential of MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) game, combining massively multiplayer online game in the present situation of the application of education teaching, discusses the massively multiplayer online games in the education teaching, so as to the theory foundation education in massively multiplayer online game, the reasonable application of teaching theory, and finally, put forward expectations about massively multiplayer online game in future education teaching.

The widespread dissemination of Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games causes new problems not only in the technical field, but also in the field of law. A number of countries have successfully implemented provisions in their legislation governing the legal relationship between players and distributors of online games. However, most states have left this question unresolved. Based on the real cases, this article examines the judicial practice of resolving disputes between players and operators of MMO games in the Russian Federation. The author shows a real picture of the current state of contract law governing relations in the field of the gaming industry and the position of courts in this matter. It substantiated the conclusion on the duality of approaches to solving the question of the nature of contractual relations depending on the subject going to court in Russia. It shows the imperfection of Russian civil law in this area.

Online game's traffic becomes one of the important traffic over the Internet. In last decade, popularity of the Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) rapidly increased. Most of MMOG are constructed based on client-server architecture. MMOG needs a network with very low-latency point-to-point in upstream direction and low-latency broadcasted from server to client in downstream direction. In the broad-band access networks, passive optical network (PON) is one of the best solutions to meet the higher bandwidth demands with low-latency. Among PON system Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) due to low cost, simplicity, and provide high bandwidth seems one of the best architecture for the MMOG. In this paper, we introduce a new Optical Network Unit (ONU) architecture and new Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (DBA) for handling online game's traffic. The proposed ONU is able to classify MMOG game and pass it to new queue instead to send the MMOG traffic to the Best Effort (BE) queue. The DBA can delay MMOG queue for some cycle without effect to the delays. Simulation results depict that our propose architecture can improve the overall QoS in terms of mean packet delay and packet loss.

Millions of people play Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) and participate in the social networks built around MMOGs daily. These players turn into a collaborative community to exchange game news, advice, and expertise, but in return expect support such as player reports and clan statistics. Thus, the MMOG social networks need to collect and analyze MMOG data, in a process of continuous MMOG analytics. With the appearance of cloud computing, it has become attractive to use on-demand resources to run automated MMOG data analytics tools. In this work we present CAMEO, an architecture for Continuous Analytics for Massively multiplayEr Online games on cloud resources. Our architecture provides various mechanisms for MMOG data collection and continuous analytics of a pre-determined accuracy in real settings. We implement and deploy CAMEO to perform continuous analytics on data from RuneScape, a popular MMOG. Using resources from various real clouds, including the commercial cloud of Amazon, CAMEO can analyze the characteristics of a community of over 3,000,000 active players, and follow the progress of 500,000 of these players for over a week. Thus, we show evidence that CAMEO can support the social networks built around MMOGs.

Massively Multi-player Online Games (MMOG) are characterized by intensive interactions between many simultaneous users and real-time demands on Quality of Service (QoS). Other examples of similar, real-time online interactive applications include various virtual environments, as well as multi-pupil e-learning and simulation-based training courses. A highly desirable enhancement for MMOG is the use of mobile devices for accessing the game application. However, the limited computing power of mobile devices is an obstacle for implementing computation-intensive parts of MMOG, in particular graphics processing, on mobile devices. This paper proposes a novel runtime system for mobile MMOG and other similar applications that moves computation-intensive tasks, including graphics processing, from the mobile devices to Cloud resources. We report experimental results of our runtime system using a realistic multi-player online game.

Millions of people play Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) and participate in the social networks built around MMOGs daily. These players turn into a collaborative community to exchange game news, advice, and expertise, but in return expect support such as player reports and clan statistics. Thus, the MMOG social networks need to collect and analyze MMOG data, in a process of continuous MMOG analytics. With the appearance of cloud computing, it has become attractive to use on-demand resources to run automated MMOG data analytics tools. In this work we present CAMEO, an architecture for Continuous Analytics for Massively multiplayEr Online games on cloud resources. Our architecture provides various mechanisms for MMOG data collection and continuous analytics of a pre-determined accuracy in real settings. We implement and deploy CAMEO to perform continuous analytics on data from RuneScape, a popular MMOG. Using resources from various real clouds, including the commercial cloud of Amazon, CAMEO can analyze the characteristics of a community of over 3,000,000 active players, and follow the progress of 500,000 of these players for over a week. Thus, we show evidence that CAMEO can support the social networks built around MMOGs.

Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) is the recently popular game genre that is capable of supporting more than thousands of players in a persistence game world concurrently With the growing of mobile game market size and improvement of wireless technology, a MMOG on mobile device is possible and being concerned. There are many issues that may be encountered when developing a MMOG. Since the mobile game must be created to run on hundreds of device, to deploy and distribute the MMOG on mobile device is harder. Also, the mobile application is easily interrupted by the surrounding environment, such as telecom service or network connectivity. Those make the mobile online game development more challenging. In this paper, we will propose a client framework for MMOG on mobile device that consider both MMOG and mobile games issues. We provide a flexible and easy-to-deploy platform for mobile MMOG.

As a genre of computer games, the massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) has the promise of enabling up to tens-or even hundreds-of thousands of simultaneous players. This paper describes how we began with an existing single-server online game engine and enhanced it to become a multiserver MMOG engine running on a grid. Other approaches require that a game be specifically designed to scale to MMOG player levels. Our approach, using IBM OptimalGrid middleware (which provides an abstracted underlying grid infrastructure to an application) allowed us to reuse an existing game engine without the need to make any significant changes to it. In this paper we examine the design elements needed by an MMOG and provide a practical implementation example-the extension of the id Software Quake II® game engine using OptimalGrid middleware. A key feature of this work is the ability to programmatically partition a game world onto a dynamically chosen and sized set of servers, each serving one or more regions of the map, followed by the reintegration of the distributed game world into a seamless presentation for game clients. We explore novel features developed in this work and present results of our initial performance validation experiments with the resulting system.

The claim that video games are replacing literacy activities that is bandied about in the American mainstream press is based not only on unspecified definitions of both ‘games' and ‘literacy’ but also on a surprising lack of research on what children actually do when they play video games. In this article, the author examines some of the practices that comprise game play in the context of one genre of video games in particular — massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). Based on data culled from a two-year online cognitive ethnography of the MMOG Lineage (both I and II), the author argues that forms of video game play such as those entailed in MMOGs are not replacing literacy activities but rather are literacy activities. In order to make this argument, the author surveys the literacy practices that MMOGamers routinely participate in, both within the game's virtual world (e.g. social interaction, in-game letters) and beyond (e.g. online game forums, the creation of fan sites and fan fiction). Then, with this argument in place, she attempts to historicize this popular contempt toward electronic ‘pop culture’ media such as video games and suggest a potentially more productive (and accurate) framing of the literacy practices of today's generation of adolescents and young adults.

In massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), complex social environments exist in which cooperation is central not only to playing the game but also to experiencing it as an individual player. The growth of multiplayer games that emphasise cooperative activities in computer-based environments has sparked academic interest in collaboration and its role in the field, engaging scholars from domains such as human–computer interaction and digital entertainment. This paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) and bibliometric analysis of 70 peer-reviewed journal papers published between 2015 and 2024. This data is derived from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. This literature review contributes to the understanding of collaborative factors in MMOGs, which include task interdependence, communication, trust, leadership, and player behaviour. The review is in the field using bibliometrics. To present the findings, we construct an input–process–output (IPO) model that links game features (inputs) and interaction dynamics (processes) to team performance and player experience (outputs) in MMOGs. This review maps the field’s dominant factors (task interdependence, communication, trust, leadership, and player behaviour), pinpoints methodological priorities, and sets a concrete agenda for future research on team collaboration in MMOGs.

The HoDoo English game was developed to take advantage of the benefits attributed to on-line games while teaching English to native Korean speakers. We expected to see that the improvements in the subjects’ English language abilities after playing the HoDoo English game would be associated with increased brain functional connectivity in the areas of the brain involved in the language production (Broca’s area) and the understanding (Wernicke’s area) networks. Twelve children, aged nine and ten, were asked to play the on-line English education game for 50 minutes per day, five days per week for twelve weeks. At baseline, and again at the end of twelve weeks of game play, each child’s English language ability was assessed and a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan was conducted. The on-line English education game play effectively improved English language skills, especially in terms of non-verbal pragmatic skills. Following twelve weeks of on-line English education game play, the children showed positive connectivity between Broca’s area and the left frontal cortex as well as between Wernicke’s area and the left parahippocampal gyrus and the right medial frontal gyrus. Changes in pragmatic scores were positively correlated with average peak brain activity in the left parahippocampal gyrus. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to report an improvement in English ability and changes in brain activity within language areas after on-line language education game play.

Long network latency negatively impacts the performance of online games, and thus mechanisms are needed to mitigate its effects in order to provide a high-quality gaming experience. In this paper, we propose an indirect relay system (IRS) to forward game-state updates over detour paths in order to reduce the round-trip time (RTT) among players. We first collect extensive traces for RTTs among actual players in online games. We then analyze these traces to quantify the potential performance gain of the detour routing. Our analysis reveals that substantial reduction in the RTTs is possible. For example, our results indicate that more than 40% of players can observe at least 100 ms of RTT reduction by routing game-state updates through 1-hop detour paths. Because of the reduction in RTTs, players can join more gaming sessions that were not available to them due to long RTTs of the direct paths. Most importantly, we design and implement a complete IRS system for online games. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first system that directly reduces RTTs among players in online games, while previous works in the literature mitigate the long RTT issue by either hiding it from players or preventing players with high RTTs from being in the same game session. We implement the proposed IRS system and deploy it on 500 PlanetLab nodes. The results from real experiments show that the IRS system improves the online gaming quality from several aspects, while incurring negligible network and processing overheads. In particular, we observe that, with the proposed IRS system, more than 80% of game sessions achieve 100 ms or higher RTT reduction.

Using Goffman’s ‘keys and frames’ as an analytical framework, this article explores depictions of massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) players in newspaper coverage, popular media ( South Park and The Big Bang Theory), and Web-based productions ( The Guild and Pure Pwnage) and player reactions to these largely stereotypical portrayals. Following this discussion, we present data from a longitudinal study of MMOG players, focusing on our study’s unintentional provoking of participants to react to (and ultimately reject) these stereotypes in their survey responses. We argue this is of particular interest to researchers studying MMOG players or members of other heavily satirized communities, as these stereotypes influence the ways study participants practice identity management and frame their own gaming practices, even in the context of an academic study that was explicitly not about addiction or the negative effects of digital game play.

The economy crisis swept all over the world in 2008, but theindustry of massive multi-player online game (MMOG) did pretty well through last year. The major reason of that should be the enormous growth of the game players and their payments. The interactive behaviors among those players in MMOG make up of a complex relationship network. Based on our study, the core players of relationship network influence the other players because of the interactive pattern of MMOG. We classify players based on degree distribution of the relationship network, and apply the methods to two types of MMOG with different payment patterns. Then we come to a conclusion that the game companies should pay more attention on the demand of the core players. Our study in this paper should be used to improve the current E-game system design and strategies.

The Virtual Hosting Environment (VHE) is an advanced Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) environment where business services can be integrated with one another across organisational boundaries and domains. The VHE also provides the means to virtualize the environment where the business servicesoperate. There are two keys areas to be considered as background for this experiment. The proof of concept aimed to provide a novel business service provision solution for online gaming. Online gaming relates to any form of game played over a network with one or more players. It involves in its simplest form a minimum of two computers (that of the player and the game server). In its more advanced form, it uses entire sets of servers, dedicated storage, and playing platforms for massive multiplayer online games (MMOG). The increasing reach of the Internet, the soaring number of connected homes, and the wider choice in technology have contributed to online gaming’s rapid growth. The Internet now offers an ever richer palette of games. The gaming industry is thriving: this was true in 2006 at the start of this Business Experiment. According to report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (2009), it is even more true today. Their report estimates that between late 2008 and 2013, the entire gaming market will grow by an average of 7.4 %, jumping from $51.4 billion in 2008 to $73.5 billion in 2013 (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2009). A recent Eurotechnology Japan report states that the Japan Gaming sector alone is booming with the combined net annual income of Japan’s top nine game companies overtaking the combined net income of Japan’s top 19 electrical giants (Eurotechnology Japan 2009). Online gaming in particular is powering the growth. In the USA, online gaming grew 22% year on year, while console game sales are expected to drop by as much as 20% year on year (comScore 2009). One of the key reasons is the cheapness of online games by comparison to console alternatives. This fuels a greater consumer demand for more readily-available, cheaper, and richer games. In Total Telecom Magazine (2009), Strategy Analytics states “Global revenues from PC and video game software reached more than US$46.5 billion in 2008, of which $6.4 billion or 22% of total revenues was derived from online channels”. In addition, “the online share of gaming is expected to continue to rise to an estimated one third of revenues in 2011/12” (Total Telecom Magazine 2009).