Online Games: Computers in Entertainment February 2015

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.
net/publication/273520045
Online Games
Article in Computers in Entertainment · February 2015

DOI: 10.1145/2582193.2633445
CITATION READS
1 9,114
1 author:
Tsung Teng Chen

National Taipei University
33 PUBLICATIONS 545 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:
NSC project 102- 2410-H-305-070 View project
All content following this page was uploaded by Tsung Teng Chen on 02 April 2015.
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Online Games: Research Perspective and Framework
TSUNG TENG CHEN, National Tapei University, Taiwan
Computer-based games have become an important social phenomenon of modern society. Fast-growing online
games are becoming the dominant sector in computer-based games. The development of online games involves
many disparate disciplines from the technology, entertainment, and behavior sciences. Attracted by the
potential impact of this rapidly growing segment, there is a growing literature addressing this fascinating
topic. However, the scope, perspective, and main research themes of online games study are still unclear to
date. Therefore, we utilized the intellectual structure technique developed by the information scientist to
help clarify the scope and themes of this research domain. We analyzed thousands of relevant literature and
tentatively identified 25 main research themes to facilitate the comprehension and study of online games.
A research framework is developed by synthesizing the research themes and references. The framework
encompasses research areas in network infrastructure, game platform architecture, game applications,
player study, ICT mediated social activities, social capital, and game business models.
Categories and Subject Descriptors: I.2.7 [Natural Language Processing]
General Terms: Algorithms, Text Analysis
Additional Key Words and Phrases: Online games, research framework, citation analysis, intellectual
structure
ACM Reference Format:
Tsung Teng Chen. 2014. Online Games: Research Perspective and Framework. ACM Comput. Entertain. 11,
4, Article 3 (December 2014), 26 pages.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2582193.2633445
1. INTRODUCTION
An online game is a multiplayer game that involves players connected through a net-
work. The network may be a wired or wireless LAN, and players may be connected by
a LAN or through the Internet. The wireless connection includes Bluetooth, WIFI, or
4G mobile broadband WiMAX or LTE. In this context, a massively multiplayer online
game (MMOG) is a multiplayer game that is capable of supporting thousands of play-
ers simultaneously. Players are connected through a network allowing them interact
in a distributed virtual game world. These virtual worlds are like persistent social and
material worlds, which are loosely structured by open-ended (fantasy or imaginary)
narratives, where players are largely free to do as they please. Individual players may
control their self-created digital characters or “avatars” to interact not only with objects
in the virtual game world but also with other players’ avatars as well.
A report from DFC Intelligence forecasts that the global market for video games is
expected to grow from $67 billion in 2012 to $82 billion in 2017 (Gaudiosi 2012). This
forecast includes revenue from dedicated console hardware and software (both physical
and online), dedicated portable hardware and software, PC games and games for mobile
devices such as smart phones, tablets and other devices that can play games as an added
Contact Author’s email address: dangkang@kmd.keio.ac.jp.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted
without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that
copies show this notice on the first page or initial screen of a display along with the full citation. Copyrights for
components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted.
To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, to redistribute to lists, or to use any component of this
work in other works requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Permissions may be requested from
Publications Dept., ACM, Inc., 2 Penn Plaza, Suite 701, New York, NY 10121-0701 USA, fax +1 (212)
869-0481, or permissions@acm.org.
c 2014 ACM 1544-3574/2014/12-ART3 $15.00
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2582193.2633445
ACM Computers in Entertainment, Vol. 11, No. 4, Article 3, Publication date: December 2014.
3:2 T. T. Chen
feature. The biggest driver of growth across the board is online distribution and online
usage business models. An online game market report forecasts estimated worldwide
revenue for online games to reach $35 billion by 2017, up from $19 billion in 2011
(Gaudiosi 2012). The latest Global Online Game Report (2012) highlighted that the
revenue generated in the online gaming market will continue to increase worldwide,
and predicted annual growth of more than 10 percent in the period from 2010 to
2016 (Reportlinker 2012). A significant trend in this sector is MMOGs. MMOGs were
especially popular in the emerging markets while there is still potential for growth.
The business potential of online games, and their rich content and context, have
inspired many researchers from diverse disciplines. There are academic conferences
dedicated to gaming, such as the International Conference in Computer Game De-
sign and Technology, and the International Conference in Computer Entertainment
Technology, both sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). There
are academic journals that specifically cover entertainment computing and digital
media, which include the International Journal of Computer Games Technology and
ACM’s Computers in Entertainment. The study of applying information technology
in games appears in ACM, IEEE, or other technology-focused publications. Behavior-
oriented game studies, such as the study of gaming addictions, may be published in
CyberPsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. The fact that the online-game-
related publications appear in outlets of disparate disciplines makes the conventional
literature-collection process, which tries to locate major journals of a discipline as the
initial literature corpus, inadequate. We therefore utilize the intellectual structure con-
struction and knowledge domain visualization techniques developed by the information
scientist to facilitate the task of analyzing voluminous literatures and deciphering the
main themes and important studies of this multidisciplinary research domain.
In this article, we explore the research themes and propose a research framework
for online games. We utilize the literature structuring methodology developed by in-
formation scientists to process 12,516 published works of online gaming literature and
present the results. This article is divided into the following sections: Section 2 in-
troduces the literature analysis and structuring methodology; Section 3 presents the
result and describes the deciphered research themes; Section 4 proposes an online
game research framework based on the result of the structuring analysis. This article
concludes in Section 5 with a categorization of the research themes uncovered.
2. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The intellectual structure building methodology has been discussed in detail and incor-
porated into a system developed by the author (Chen 2012). We will explain the main
concept and some important methods in the following subsections. The methodology
has been applied in analyzing several research domains (Chen and Yen 2009, Lee and
Chen 2012).
2.1. The Intellectual Structure Methodology
The foundation of the intellectual structure constructing method is citation and co-
citation analysis. The citation analysis method was pioneered by Garfield et al.
(Garfield, Sher et al. 1964). The citation analysis method is one of the informatics meth-
ods developed to analyze documents’ citation relationships. The citation relationships
may be abstracted into a citation network represented by a graph. Citation network
reveals the citation relationships (links) between articles (nodes). It may also expose
important nodes via the structure of the network. The concept of co-citation was pio-
neered by Small, who developed the citation map as an analytic tool for interpretation
of the results of literature analysis (Small 1973). The co-citation is an induced relation-
ship derived from the action of citation; two articles are co-cited if there exists another
Online Games: Research Perspective and Framework 3:3
article that cites both of them. It is usually depicted as an undirected line between arti-
cles. Graph based relationships between multiple nodes are conveniently represented
by a matrix. A “1” in the matrix’s cell indicates the presence of the relationship while
an “0” denotes the absence of a relationship between the nodes abstracted in the corre-
sponding column and row of the matrix. We may use the adjacent matrix A to represent
the relationship of direct citation, and the co-citation relationship can be derived by
the matrix multiple operation of AT A (the transpose of the matrix A multiplies with
itself). An intellectual structure is derived from the co-citation network of a research
domain. Researchers in information science applied co-citation analysis to construct
the intellectual structure of a discipline in the early 1980s (White and Griffith 1981).
Co-citation analysis relates bibliographic data based on co-citation strengths, which
is usually derived from co-citation counts between documents. Price theorized about
knowledge growth by stating that scientific researchers constitute a “research front,”
focusing their attention, as expressed by their references, to a selective part of the
most recent literature. Thus, a network of citation relations is created with relatively
“high density areas” related to “research fronts” (Price 1965). Document co-citation
analysis attempts to identify such “high density areas” in a citation network by clus-
tering highly co-cited documents, further helping researchers discover the existence of
research fronts. The cluster of co-cited documents represents the knowledge base of the
specialty: the key concepts, methods, or experiments that researchers build on (Small
1977).
2.2. The Data Collection and Reduction Method
We drew the citation data from the online citation database Microsoft Academic Search
(Carlson 2006) in April 2012. Citation data was collected by querying the database
with the key phrases “online games” and retrieving the initial 1,160 seed papers.
These seed papers were then used as the initial seed set to retrieve papers that are
citing or are cited by literatures in the initial seed set. This two-way literature search
is recommended by journal editors for writing literature reviews (Webster and Watson
2002), and has also been carried out by an earlier system (Chen and Xie 2005). The
full citation graph is built by linking all articles retrieved, which include many more
documents than the traditional citation expansion schemes that search references
found only in the initial set of papers retrieved by a query. In order to keep the
most relevant literatures, the depth of the expanded search was limited to one layer.
The complete citation graph contains 12,516 document nodes and 20,090 citation arcs.
The resulting citation graph is too large to be effectively analyzed. We first pruned the
graph using citation counts as the threshold value, which generated a square adjacent
matrix with 2,311 rows. A co-citation graph with 1,966 vertexes was generated by
multiplying the citation adjacent matrix with its transposed matrix. The resulting
co-citation matrix was further consolidated by pruning out papers that were co-cited
fewer than three times, which produced a co-citation graph with 210 nodes and 701
co-citation edges.
2.3. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and PFNET
The main purposes of the principal component (factor) analysis (PCA) are: (1) to re-
duce the number of variables and (2) to detect structure in the relationships between
variables. Therefore, PCA is applied as a data reduction or structure detection method
(Stevens 1999). We use PCA to combine correlated variables (papers) into one compo-
nent (research theme). In our case, 210 papers are represented by 30 themes, whereas
the first theme is a surrogate for 30 papers. The PCA method extracts the most sig-
nificant component first, which accounts for the largest possible variance, and each
succeeding component extracted in turn accounts for less variance. The co-citation
3:4 T. T. Chen
matrix is the input of PCA. Thirty components with Eigenvalue greater than one are
extracted from the co-citation matrix processed by PCA. The PCA procedure also gen-
erates a Pearson correlation coefficients’ matrix, which stores the correlation values
between papers. The correlation coefficients in the matrix are used as a relatedness
measurement among papers. Pathfinder (Schvaneveldt 1990) scaling is then applied
to extract the most important relationships from the graph represented by the correla-
tion matrix. The result of the Pathfinder procedure is a pruned network called PFNET,
which keeps only those links that do not violate the triangle inequality, stating that the
distance between two nodes passing through any group of intermediate nodes must be
less than or equal to the direct distance between them. PFNET provides unique rep-
resentations of the underlying structure for domains in which objective measures of
distance are available (Schvaneveldt 1990). The correlation coefficients are used as
the basis for Pathfinder scaling. The value of the correlation coefficient ranges from -1
to 1, which makes it a poor distance metric. The distance between nodes is therefore
normalized by taking d = 1/(ep ), whereas p is the correlation coefficient. The denom-
inator of the equation is equal to one plus the exponential function of value p. The
normalized distance between items is inversely proportional to the correlation coef-
ficient, which maps less correlated items apart and highly correlated items spatially
adjacent. The Pathfinder algorithm takes the normalized distance matrix as input, and
keeps the strongest (shortest) links between nodes by pruning out weaker (lengthier)
links. The topology of a PFNET is determined by two parameters, q and r, and the cor-
responding network is denoted as PFNET(r, q). The parameter q constrains the scope
of minimum cost paths to be calculated. The parameter r defines the Minkowski metric
used for computing the distance of a path. In our case and most of the other cases, the
value of q is set to the number of nodes in the graph and r is set to infinity. The result
of Pathfinder scaling is a PFNET graph with two distinct features: (1) there is only one
path between any two nodes in the graph; (2) this path is also the shortest path. A path
may consist up to q-1 number of links, which means a path may traverse at most q
number of nodes. By definition, the sub-paths between any two nodes along a shortest
path are also shortest paths themselves. Since distance is inversely proportional to the
relativeness denoted by the correlation coefficient, the shortest paths’ preservation is
equivalent to keeping the most pertinent relationships, a.k.a. the strongest links.
3. RESEARCH THEMES OF ONLINE GAMES
To focus our study on the more important themes, we took the top 25 components,
which collectively explained 89.1 percent of the total variances. These 25 components
are selected as the representative major themes of online gaming research. Papers with
a loading over 0.60 to a component are collected and studied to decide the content of this
component. The loading value denotes the degree of dependence (relatedness) a paper
has to the theme it ascribed. Although a theme is a surrogate for a list of papers, the
loading of each paper ascribed to the theme may be varied. A loading value 1 indicates
a paper is completely correlated with (represented by) the theme. A loading over 0.6 is
considered significant. A proper descriptive name for this component is decided, and
the content of the research theme represented by this component is then discussed. The
unit of analysis used here is document instead of author. An author is considered as the
proxy of the specialty s/he represents. However, a researcher’s specialty may change
or evolve over time. Therefore, we took the document as the analysis unit in our study,
which is also the unit of analysis used by Small (Small 1973). The components and
the variances explained by these components are listed in Table I. All papers in the
dataset account for 100 percent of variance. A theme is a surrogate for a list of papers
that accounts for a portion of the total variance. A higher variance usually corresponds
to a longer list of papers.
Table I. Research themes of online games and the variances explained by each theme.
# Theme Variances Explained
1 Multiplayer game architecture – maintaining interactivity 16.873
2 Distributed object location and routing infrastructure 7.122
3 Game addictions and flow 5.669
4 Technology acceptance model 5.310
5 Game mediated learning 4.952
6 Latency hiding and bandwidth deduction mechanism 4.815
7 (Game induced) Network traffic modeling 4.693
8 Game cheating comprehension and prevention 3.924
9 Psychological and demographical study of online gamers 3.676
10 Traffic modeling of first-person shooter (FPS) games 2.861
11 Cheating prevention by design 2.791
12 Fairness preservation in gaming 2.542
13 Game bots detection and prevention 2.51
14 Social activities in MMOG 2.236
15 Fairness preservation mechanism in client-server based games 1.983
16 User study of the effect of adverse network conditions on games’ 1.922
perception and performance
17 ISP related Network Quality of Service (QoS) considerations for gaming 1.912
18 Design consideration/recommendation for MMOG/MMORPG 1.894
19 Communication protocol for large-scale networked virtual 1.791
environments
20 Synthetic network coordinate system 1.731
21 Social capital and weak ties in social network 1.676
22 Architecture for massive real-time strategy game (RTS) 1.594
23 Online games nurture the bridging social capital 1.557
24 Design and implementation issues of networked virtual environments 1.533
25 Measurement studies of virtual populations in MMOGs 1.513
3.1. Multiplayer Game Architecture – Maintaining Interactivity

This research theme is about the system architecture that maintains the interactivity
for networked multiplayer game applications. The MMOG platform needs to synchro-
nize the activities of game players to impress them with pleasant game experiences,
which corresponds to the smoothness and responsiveness felt by the players. The de-
sired architecture is capable of rapid delivery of game actions among the various nodes
in the network that is independent of user’s location, utilized device, type of connec-
tion, and number of contemporary players. The architecture of the MMOG used to be
client-server or peer-to-peer based. However, the mirrored game server architecture is
currently the prevalent architecture, for it combines the advantages of the traditional
centralized architectures and the scalability of the P2P architecture. The advantage of
the client/server architecture is simpler and easier-to-maintain consistent game states
for all the players, but it also has the single bottleneck and single point-of-failure
problem. The mirrored server architecture employs a network of servers connecting by
high-speed private network. Each of the servers locally maintains a redundant version
of the game states, serves a portion of the clients, and shares the communication and
computation loading of the game platform. The bottleneck and the single of point-of-
failure issues are thus resolved. The architecture is scalable by adding more servers
to balance out the heavy load that is imposed by many simultaneously engaging play-
ers. Each mirrored game server serves a certain number of players and maintains the
game states for each of the players. A mirrored game server manages and updates
3:6 T. T. Chen
its own copy of game states based on the events coming from its engaged players and
other servers. The game server also forwards the events generated by its connected
players to other servers, and delivers the updated game states to its connected players.
To ensure a consistent and responsive evolution of the game state, an efficient event
synchronization scheme among mirrored game servers is required.
The articles ascribed to this factor are thus mostly dedicated to the study of effi-
cient event synchronization, which is essential to maintain interactivity. Ferretti and
Roccetti proposed an event delay averting approach, which is based on the notion of ob-
solescence (Ferretti, Roccetti et al. 2007). This approach drops those game events that
lose their significance during the game evolution. An event becomes obsolete when
events generated by new actions supersede the original event. This situation may
happen when a rapid succession of movements in an action game generates events
representing the last location rendering the previous one useless. The event processing
activity is sped up by discarding obsolete events, which in turn lessen the delay expe-
rienced by the server and increase the responsiveness of the game. A similar approach
of keeping the delay of event delivery under a threshold was also proposed in the
Interactivity-Loss Avoidance scheme (Cronin, Filstrup et al. 2002). A consistent state
in the game servers provides a coherent view for the players in the game. A consistent
state is maintained if the server executes the events in correct order. A wait-and-see
strategy verifying the correct order of an event before the execution taking place will
delay the response and bring down the interactivity of the game. Therefore, events
are executed before their order could be verified. An out-of-order event may render
an inconsistent state, which confuses the players. An improved rollback-based scheme
restoring the earlier state prior to the execution of the out-of-order event is therefore
devised (Cronin, Filstrup et al. 2002).
3.2. Distributed Object Location and Routing Infrastructure

The research theme addressed by articles ascribed to this factor is the study of scalable,
distributed, and fault-tolerant object location and routing infrastructure. One of the key
problems in large-scale peer-to-peer applications is how to provide efficient algorithms
for object location and routing within the network. Peer-to-peer systems have many
interesting technical aspects like decentralized control, self-organizing, adaptation and
scalability, which have been adopted by the mirrored game server architecture we
discussed earlier. Peer-to-peer systems can be characterized as distributed systems in
which all nodes have identical capabilities and responsibilities, and all communication
is symmetric. Pastry is a general infrastructure upon which a variety of peer-to-peer
Internet applications like global file sharing, file storage, group communication and
naming systems may be constructed (Rowstron and Druschel 2001). Scribe, a scalable
application-level multicast infrastructure which supports large numbers of groups,
with a potentially large number of members per group were built on top of Pastry
(Castro, Druschel et al. 2002). Pastry, along with Tapestry (Zhao, Kubiatowicz et al.
2001) and Chord (Stoica, Morris et al. 2001), represents a second generation of peer-
to-peer routing and location schemes that guarantee a definite answer to a query in a
bounded number of network hops, while retaining the scalability and self-organizing
properties of both FreeNet and Gnutella (Rowstron and Druschel 2001). Peer-to-peer
(P2P) support for MMOG has been implemented using Pastry and Scribe to disseminate
game state (Knutsson, Lu et al. 2004). P2P-based MMOG architecture is problematic
due to the challenges of partitioning game states and execution among participating
peers, and meeting the performance demands of real-time gaming. Colyseus is a game-
platform architecture that supports P2P-based FPS, as well as MMOG games. Colyseus
overcomes the aforementioned difficulties by taking advantage of a game’s tolerance
for weakly consistent states and exploiting the locality and predictability in data access
patterns (Bharambe, Pang et al. 2006).
3.3. Game Addictions and Flow
More people are starting to play and are becoming addicted to playing computer games
as reported by the media (Sutter 2012). A survey study found MMOPRG users domi-
nated the heavy overuse game players, who spend more than eight continuous hours
playing in one session (Ng and Wiemer-Hastings 2005). The possible causes of game
addiction symptoms were explored, which found users who have experienced flow are
more likely to become addicted (Chou and Ting 2003). Flow is defined as “the holistic
sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement.” (Csikszentmihalyi
1975). Flow is described as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity
that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will
do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” (Csikszentmihalyi 1991). Video
gamers may equate this state to the feelings of immersion in the game or being lost in
the experience. It has been found that interaction with online games may induce flow,
which influences customer loyalty in turn (Choi and Kim 2004). Flow was found to be
linked to the exploratory use of the computer, which in turn was linked to the extent
of computer usage (Ghani and Deshpande 1994). The perceived task challenge (e.g.,
advance in game playing) and a sense of being in control have been found as the key
factors that result in the state of enjoyment and intense concentration called optimal
flow (Ghani 1995).
3.4. Technology Acceptance Modeling
In a broad sense, an online game is one kind of information technology (IT). The motiva-
tion of using IT and the predictor of IT acceptance and utilization has been extensively
studied by information systems scholars during the last two decades. The perceived
ease of use and perceived usefulness have been proposed and empirically validated
as the predictor for user acceptance of computers (Davis 1989). Prior studies in psy-
chology suggested that holistic experiences with technology as captured in theoretical
constructs such as flow and enjoyment are potentially important explanatory variables
in technology acceptance modeling (Trevino and Webster 1992). Therefore, researchers
posited cognitive absorption as the antecedent of the perceived usefulness and per-
ceived ease of use constructs. Cognitive absorption was theorized as being exhibited
through dimensions of temporal dissociation, focused immersion, heightened enjoy-
ment, control, and curiosity (Agarwal and Karahanna 2000). The multi-dimensional
structure of cognitive absorption is quite similar to the flow experienced from game
playing. An individual’s affective and behavioral reactions to IT are influenced by both
his computer self-efficacy and outcome expectations (Compeau, Higgins et al. 1999).
Computer self-efficacy is the belief in one’s ability to successfully perform a task us-
ing a computer. It is concerned not with the computer skills one has but rather with
judgments of what one can do with whatever skills one possesses. In contrast with
user interfaces, self-efficacy is a system-independent factor, which has been shown to
be more important than user perceptions that relate to user-system interactions in
determining perceived ease of use of a particular system (Venkatesh 2000). It has been
concluded that system-independent constructs (e.g. self-efficacy) play a stronger role
than constructs that are a result of the user-interaction at all stages of user experi-
ence with a system (Venkatesh 2000). We may reasonably infer that a game needs to
provide some training scenarios, which will strengthen the self-efficacy of players. The
self-efficacy building mechanism will entice players into the game initially, and once it
has been built up, will enhance the players’ experience in the later stage of the game
playing.
3:8 T. T. Chen
3.5. Game Mediated Learning

Gee (Gee 2003) argued that good computer and video games incorporate a whole set
of fundamentally sound learning principles that can be used in other settings. He iter-
ated a few examples of good learning principles that are incorporated in good games.
These principles include: (1) provide just-in-time and on-demand information suited
for players’ purposes and goals; (2) operate at the outer and growing edge of player’s
competence while schools often operate at the lowest common denominator; (3) allow
players to be producers (of game episodes, scenarios, etc.) and not just consumers;
(4) present the game sequels in the order that amenable for learning; (5) create “a
cycle of expertise,” which is the basis for producing expertise in any area; (6) moti-
vate playing and learning; (7) collaborate in teams when players play in MMOGs that
cultivate team spirit. The collaborative nature of MMOG makes the player focus on
the activity, whereas the information (e.g., manuals and guidebooks) play only a sec-
ondary and supporting role, unlike most classrooms (Steinkuehler 2004). In MMOGs,
there is a socially sanctioned precociousness and wonder that provides motivation for
quasi-scientific inquiry, such that gamers transform design curiosities into empirical
questions by collecting data, building mathematical models based on that data, and
then placing those models in competition with one another to see which can most accu-
rately predict the system (i.e., mini-maxing) (Steinkuehler 2004). By examining what
gamers actually do playing MMOGs, it has been revealed that gaming is not replacing
literacy practice but rather is a literacy practice (Steinkuehler 2007). It turns out that
MMOGs are not a threat to literacy in contemporary culture; it is an important part
of it.
3.6. Latency Hiding and Bandwidth Deduction Mechanism

This theme discusses the issues in designing communication architecture for large-
scale virtual environments on the Internet. The communication architecture is devel-
oped to address latency, which is a problem of fast-paced interactive games played via
the Internet. The interactivity and smoothness of Internet games could be severely
degraded by typical WAN or even LAN latencies. Engaging players need to exchange
data packets frequently to keep their game’s state updated and synchronized, which
in turn consumes a lot of bandwidth in massive multi-player games. Techniques for
latency hiding and bandwidth deduction were developed to address this issue. One
earlier approach is using IP multicast by allowing data to be sent to all participants.
The multicast approach may congest the network, particularly at the receiver side. An
interest-partition-based approach was proposed to dynamically partition the virtual
environment into spatial areas and associate these areas with multicast groups (Léty
and Turletti 1999). The incoming traffic at the receiver side may be kept to a low level
by this approach. Another approach is locally replicating all simulating entities in the
game and extrapolating the movement of these entities until an update is required.
This approach was named “dead reckoning,” which employs the tracking locally and
convergence globally method to present a smooth visualization of an entity’s current
position (Singhal and Cheriton 1996).
3.7. (Game induced) Network Traffic Modeling

As Internet online games become more prevalent, the network traffic generated by
games are increasing, but their impact on the network infrastructure was not well
understood. The pattern of this novel traffic, therefore, demands further investigation.
A comprehensive analysis of a range of popular online game servers showed the traffic
behavior of these servers is highly predictable (Feng, Chang et al. 2005). The packet
traces of the game servers reveal the presence of large and highly periodic bursts of
small packets. A similar study on a popular MMOPRG server found the traffic exhibited
strong periodicity, temporal locality, and irregularity with small packets (Chen, Huang
et al. 2005).
3.8. Game Cheating Comprehension and Prevention
Cheating becomes a serious threat to the online game provider’s business. Cheaters try
to gain unfair advantage over other players, for example, by duplicating game items or
more generally short-cutting achievements, which would take enormous time and/or
effort for honest players. This can totally destroy the in-game economics of an online
game: formerly valuable and rare items become widely available, powerful high-level
characters, which are usually a rare occurrence, may now be seen everywhere. Honest
players will soon notice that they cannot keep up with cheaters and either use cheats
themselves (and thus accelerate the collapse of the economic system) or stop playing
the game. Besides the item duplication and short-cutting cheats, another kind of cheat-
ing is carried out by acquiring secret information, e.g., the position of an enemy that is
hiding in a forest. A review and classification of known cheats was presented and pro-
vided with real-world examples (Webb and Soh 2007). A classification and taxonomy of
online-games cheating with respect to the underlying vulnerability, consequence, and
the cheating principal were also presented (Yan and Randell 2005). Approaches have
been proposed to prevent game cheating in a P2P architecture such as cross-validating
clients’ game states, game state transition auditing, and trusted computing which
assumes players are unable to manipulate their client software in any way (Kabus,
Terpstra et al. 2005). Another approach was proposed to prevent modifications of game
clients (and thus thwart hacking behaviors) as well as to prevent access to informa-
tion in the game-client and therefore inhibit cheating through information extraction
(Monch, Grimen et al. 2006). A protocol with provable anti-cheating guarantees was
proposed that would be applicable to common game features as well as clustering and
cell-based techniques for MMOG (Baughman, Liberatore et al. 2007). In response to
the heightened security threats of online games, it is argued that the design of online
games needs to address the security concerns and make the play fair for each player
(Yan 2003).
3.9. Psychological and Demographical Study of Online Gamers
Reports of excessive computer game playing have been discussed in the popular press
as well as in recent scientific research. A sampling of 7000+ gamers found nearly
12 percent of the participating gamers fulfilled diagnostic criteria of addiction concern-
ing their gaming behavior, while there was only weak evidence for the interrelation
between aggressive behavior and excessive gaming (Grüsser, Thalemann et al. 2006).
A study on a MMOPRG game called EverQuest appeared to show players becoming
addicted to the game in the same way that other people become addicted to alcohol
or gambling (Chappell, Eatough et al. 2006). Most of the individuals in the EverQuest
study appear to show the core components of addiction such as withdrawal symptoms,
cravings, and relapse. A study to investigate the conscious and unconscious psycholog-
ical motivations of online game addicts was carried out, which found seven categories
of needs and motivations: (1) entertainment and leisure, (2) emotional copying,
(3) escape from reality, (4) fulfilling (unsatisfied) interpersonal and social needs, (5) the
need for accomplishment, (6) the need for excitement and challenge, and (7) the need
for in-power and in-control (Wan and Chiou 2006). The social interactions of games in
MMORPGs were studied, which showed these games can be extremely social games,
with high percentages of gamers making life-long friends and partners (Cole and
Griffiths 2007). The study concluded that virtual gaming may allow players to express
themselves in ways they may not feel comfortable doing in real life because of their
3:10 T. T. Chen
appearance, gender, sexuality, and/or age. The study also found MMORPGs offer a
place where teamwork, encouragement, and fun can be experienced. Demographic data
with respect to the EverQuest game was collected, and the results showed that 81 per-
cent of players were male and the mean age of players was 27.9 years of old (Griffiths,
Davies et al. 2004). This study also found that the social aspects of the game were the
most important factor in game playing. The same authors also compared adolescent
and adult gamers in a study, which found the adolescent players are more likely to be
male and less likely to do gender swap their characters, and significantly more likely
to sacrifice their education or work (for game playing) (Griffiths, Davies et al. 2004).
3.10. Traffic Modeling of First-Person Shooter (FPS) Games
The network traffic of various fast-paced online games, which include Halo, Halo 2,
Half Life, and Quake 3, were modeled by studies ascribed to this factor. The band-
width, packet rate, packet length, and the distribution of packet inter-arrival times
were characterized by these studies. Traffic simulation models for these games were
developed and compared against the experimentally collected data (Lang, Branch et al.
2004, Zander and Armitage 2005). Quality of Service (QoS) metrics for game applica-
tions were defined, which included packet loss, delay, and jitter as the main criteria
for the assessment of game traffic quality (Färber 2004). The general network traffic
characteristics of first-person shooter games are: small packet, high and very regular
packet rate, and bursts traffic for server (Färber 2004).
3.11. Cheating Prevention by Design and Management
As we have discussed in factor eight, cheating tactics have been thoroughly reviewed.
Cheating prevention should not be a posterior mitigating patching; instead it should
be a critical design requirement contemplated before the game is developed. Pritchard
discussed some techniques, which make it harder for games to be hacked and used
as a cheating vehicle (Pritchard 2000). Some cheating practices, such as collusion or
trading virtual assets, cannot possibly be solved completely by pure technical means.
In those cases, some managerial interventions are required (Yan and Choi 2002).
3.12. Fairness Preservation in Gaming
Leveling the playing field of multiplayer online games refers to ensuring players may
compete with each other in a fair manner. Besides cheating prevention, fairness preser-
vation is delegated by equating the network latency between players because it has
been shown that latency difference can lead to unfairness in fast-paced first-person
shooter games (Armitage 2003). To mitigate the fairness problem in the case of delay
differences caused by the network, a self-adjusting game lagging utility is developed
that attempts to equalize the delay differences by constantly monitoring network de-
lays and adjusting players’ total delays by adding artificial lag (Zander, Leeder et al.
2005). The delay equating method may jeopardize the interactivity of the game since
the added delay time usually corresponds to the longest transmission latency. A novel
“Fairness and Interactivity Loss Avoidance” (FILA) was developed, which exploits the
notions of event obsolescence to ensure fairness while upholding interactivity (Ferretti,
Palazzi et al. 2006).
3.13. Game Mediated Learning
Gee (Gee 2003) argued that good computer and video games incorporate a whole set of
fundamentally sound learning principles that can be used in other settings. He iterated
a few examples of good learning principles that are incorporated in good games. These
principles include: (1) provide just-in-time and on-demand information suited for play-
ers’ purposes and goals; (2) operate at the outer and growing edge of player’s competence
while schools often operate at the lowest common denominator; (3) allow players to be
producers (of game episodes, scenarios, etc.) and not just consumers; (4) present the
game sequels in the order that amenable for learning; (5) create “a cycle of expertise,”
which is the basis for producing expertise in any area; (6) motivate playing and learn-
ing; (7) collaborate in teams when players play in MMOGs that cultivate team spirit.
The collaborative nature of MMOG makes the player focus on the activity, whereas
the information (e.g., manuals and guidebooks) play only a secondary and supporting
role, unlike most classrooms (Steinkuehler 2004). In MMOGs, there is a socially sanc-
tioned precociousness and wonder that provides motivation for quasi-scientific inquiry,
such that gamers transform design curiosities into empirical questions by collecting
data, building mathematical models based on that data, and then placing those models
in competition with one another to see which can most accurately predict the system
(i.e., mini-maxing) (Steinkuehler 2004). By examining what gamers actually do playing
MMOGs, it has been revealed that gaming is not replacing literacy practice but rather
is a literacy practice (Steinkuehler 2007). It turns out that MMOGs are not a threat to
literacy in contemporary culture; it is an important part of it.
3.14. Game Bots Prevention
Multiplayer online games are subjected to various forms of cheating. One popular form
is using software robots to play the game automatically and gain an unfair advantage.
An “aiming bot” detecting method based on the dynamic Bayesian network approach
was proposed, and the test demonstrated the effectiveness of this method (Yeung,
Lui et al. 2006). The method exploited the significant differences of aiming accuracy
between the human players and bots under extreme conditions such as when the aimer
and the aimed target are both moving. Another study found that the traffic patterns
generated by human players and game bots are discernible in MMOPRGs (Chen, Jiang
et al. 2009). Game bots may therefore be caught by their traffic patterns. Integrating
CAPTCHA test into online games was proposed to prevent bots from playing online
game (Golle and Ducheneaut 2005). A CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test
used as an attempt to ensure that the response is from humans instead of computers.
3.15. Social Activities in MMOG
Power gamers, in contrast with casual gamers, are focused on efficiency and instru-
mental orientation as well as dynamic goal setting. They were found to be committed
to understanding the underlying game systems/structures; they strive for the technical
and skill proficiency in game playing. Power gamers are particularly attuned to mak-
ing the most of the time in the game and understanding actions to produce efficient
reward paths. Contrasting to the stereo type view of power gamers as “lone ranger”
figures; isolated socially inept people with little “real life”, they are actually embedded
in a deep social structure. Their play style is actually facilitated through a variety of
distinct social activities (Taylor 2003). Power gamers were described as significantly
different to the “achievers”. Achiever, killer, socializer, and explorer categories are often
used to characterize players in online games (Bartle 1996). In a study that explores
how social interactions play an integral role in a MMOG, it was found the game is like
a self-governed virtual world in which complex social networks and systems of trust,
reputation, insider/outsider distinctions and alliances prevail (Jakobsson and Taylor
2003). The virtual or online ethnography methodology (Mason 1999) was applied in
analyzing the social activities observed in MMOG.
3.16. Fairness in Client-Server Based Games
Fairness is a major challenge when players over large geographic areas partici-
pate in client-server based games together. A study proposed a game-independent
3:12 T. T. Chen
network-based service that balances the trade-off between response time and fairness
(Lin, Guo et al. 2002). Another study proposed a proxy-based framework, which con-
sists of proxies for both the game server and the game clients. The server proxy is
responsible for delivering players’ actions in a fair order, which is achieved by tagging
messages with extra information at the origin proxy and processing the extra informa-
tion at the destination proxy (Guo, Mukherjee et al. 2003). The proxies shield off the
extra processing works, which make this fair-order delivery process transparent to the
server as well as clients.
3.17. User Study of the Effect of Adverse Network Conditions on Games’
Perception and Performance
The conjecture of players’ perception and performance in MMOG will be affected by the
network latency and jitter drives the latency balancing and easing researches. However,
whether players’ perception of the game has been impacted, or their performance in
the game has been affected by the adverse network conditions, has not been tested.
The player’s view on network latency for a variety of games were investigated in a
study, which tried to identify coherences between delay, jitter, skill, game score, and
the subjective impression of the player (Dick, Wellnitz et al. 2005). The effects of latency
and packet loss on gamer’s performance were studied, but found no significant impact
on the outcome of the game (Beigbeder, Coughlan et al. 2004). A similar study of real-
time strategy (RTS) games found the effect of even very high latency, while noticeable
to users, had a negligible effect on the outcome of the game (Claypool 2005).
3.18. ISP related Network Quality of Service (QoS) Considerations
A survey study found members of the gaming community do possess some network
awareness (Oliveira and Henderson 2003). The survey found 69 percent of the players
aware the network effect and tend to choose the game sever with lower ping times.
However, most of the players indicated they won’t pay for a better network QoS in the
survey. The speculation that highly interactive online games require a minimum QoS
from the network inspired the study of the performance metrics, which players are
willing to tolerate (Zander and Armitage 2004). The effect of the network performance
metrics such as packets delay and loss on players’ perception on games is inconclu-
sive since different games adopt varied mechanisms to alleviate the adverse network
conditions.
3.19. Design Considerations/Recommendations for MMOG/MMORPG
Several studies collected empirical data regarding players’ social experiences, and made
some suggestions for the design of future games. An empirical study of World of War-
craft (WoW) showed the playing time is more stable after a higher level has been
achieved by guilded players (Ducheneaut, Yee et al. 2006). The study found joint ac-
tivities are not very prevalent. Instead of playing with other people, players rely on
them as an audience for their in-game performances, as an entertaining spectacle, and
as an easily accessible source of information and chitchat. The study also found the
absence of good social networking/navigation tools has made it difficult to manage a
guild, which exerts social pressure on their members to play longer. Thus, the design
recommendations derived from this study include: 1) producing spectacular effects and
obtaining impressive ornaments to attract in-game spectators, with which the player
also feels esteemed; 2) providing mechanisms to make the player feel accompanied;
3) offering means and incentives to facilitate the creation and management of guild,
and strengthen the cohesion of its members; 4) enabling impromptu entertaining acts
by in-game characters. A flexible in-game environment where players are allowed to
form communities, which enable them with new activities and new forms of play are
suggested in a study (Brown and Bell 2004). The study also mentioned the implemen-
tation of resources for play that can be combined and used in different or new ways.
The players can invent new activities around these resources for play. A game designed
to support gamers’ play in unpredictable ways is also suggested. Another study tar-
geted at WoW found the lightweight online relationships in the game make it more fun
and engender a flexible learning space (Nardi and Harris 2006). This study considered
that WoW provides an interesting model for learning a complex set of skills through
its multiple sources of collaboration and spirit of strangers’ collaborations. The study
asserted WoW gives people a chance to engage in lightweight collaborations and then
assess whether they wish to continue the relationship in another form. The design
recommendations drawn from this study emphasize the capability of collaborating in
multiple modes or ways, and having flexibility of choosing game resources that suit
the player. The interaction patterns of Star Wars Galaxies (SWG), which is attempting
to better support the more social character of MMPROG, were studied (Ducheneaut
and Moore 2004). SWG is considered to be trying to structure the game to maximize
player-to-player encounters and subsequent interactions. Some locations in SWG are
tied to the provision of an essential service to force players to congregate and wait.
However, the study found a relatively low level of interactivity between the players,
characterized by short interactions centered on instrumental purposes (e.g. utilizing
the essential service). The design suggestions offered by this study are rewarding the
social players, who made the designated socializing locations truly social environments.
The game should provide facilities for the identification of social players and the build-
ing of private social spaces.
3.20. Communication Protocol for Large-Scale Networked Virtual Environments
The conventional systems coped with the scalability problem posed by networked vir-
tual environments using divide-and-conquer strategy, which segments players onto
multiple servers or multicast groups, limiting the number of users that could interact
with each other. This strategy forces developers to invest enormous extra resources
on the hardware and software systems. Therefore, a fully distributed communication
protocol for P2P large-scale networked virtual environments, that alleviates the short-
comings of the divide-and-conquer method, was proposed (Kawahara, Aoyama et al.
2004).
3.21. Synthetic Network Coordinate System
Large-scale Internet applications such as MMOG can benefit from an ability to predict
round-trip times to other hosts without having to contact them first. Explicit mea-
surements are often unattractive because the cost of measurement can outweigh the
benefits of exploiting proximity information. Algorithms using synthesized hosts’ coor-
dinates, which are based on absolute coordinates computed from modeling the Internet
as a geometric space, to predict the communication latency between them are proposed
(Ng and Hui 2002, Dabek, Cox et al. 2004).
3.22. Social Capital and Weak Ties in Social Networks
Articles ascribed to this factor are seminar works in the social network analysis and
social capital fields. Coleman (Coleman 1988) introduced and illustrated social capi-
tal, which is defined as anything that facilitates individual or collective action, gen-
erated through networks of relationships, reciprocity, trust, and social norms. There
are two kinds of social capital: bonding capital and bridging capital differentiated by
Putman (Putnam 2001). Putman asserted bridging capital is inclusive, which occurs
when individuals from different backgrounds make connections between social net-
works. Bridging capital functions as a kind of sociological lubricant, this is marked by
3:14 T. T. Chen
tentative relationships that lack in depth but make up for their breadth. In contrast to
bridging social capital, bonding capital is marked by relationships with less diversity
but stronger personal connects, such as family and close friends who provide emotional
or substantive support for one another. Granovetter illustrated the strength of weak
ties, which impacts the diffusion of influence and information, mobility opportunity,
and community organization (Granovetter 1973). The relationships between players in
MMOG or MMORPG are modeled as weak ties, which foster bridging social capital, to
facilitate the analysis of their socially interactions.
3.23. Synthetic Network Coordinate System
Besides MMOG/MMORPG, there are two other genres of popular multiplayer online
game: FPS and RTS games. These two genres of game are still rarely considered
for massively multiplayer since they usually allow no more than ten online players
in a game, in contrast with thousands online gamers in MMOG. One of the main
reasons that kept these two genres from being massively multiplayer is the absence of
a suitable scalable multi-server networking architecture. The commonly used zoning
concept performs well for MMOPRGs, but it is barely suitable for RTS and FTS games.
A study proposed a proxy-server architecture, which enables massively RTS played by
hundreds of users (Müller and Gorlatch 2006).
3.24. Online Games Nurture the Bridging Social Capital
The form and function of MMOGs in terms of social engagement have been examined
in an empirical study (Steinkuehler and Williams 2006). The study concluded that
MMOGs have the capacity to function as one form of a new virtual “third place” for
informal sociability by providing spaces for social interaction and relationships beyond
the workplace and home. The old brick-and-mortar “third places” in some countries are
places where individuals can gather to socialize informally beyond the workplace and
home. Participation in such virtual “third places” appears well suited to the formation
of bridging social capital. However, it is worth noting that as gamers become more
involved in long-term social networks such as guilds, and their activities become more
like a hardcore gamer, the function of MMOGs as “third places” begins to wane. Not
all MMOG players make this transition, but those who do are likely to experience
relationships closer to bonding ones than bridging ones. A month-long cohort study of
an immersive online video game found both bonding and bridging social capital dropped
for online as well as off-line contexts (Williams 2006). Nevertheless, there was positive
change that some participants’ increased their global outlook and connectedness. The
study demonstrated that playing online games had a mixed but mostly negative impact.
The latter study does not seem to support the conjecture that MMOGs may nurture
bridging social capital.
3.25. Design and Implementation Issues of Networked Virtual Environments
Building a networked game with a 3D virtual environment is quite a formidable task.
Bernier described the working of basic client-server architecture and how to compen-
sate the network lag (Bernier 2001). A comprehensive text on the networked virtual
environment and all the technical details programmers should know (Singhal and Zyda
1999) is also included in this factor.
3.26. Measurement Studies of Virtual Populations in MMOGs
Understanding the distributions and behaviors of players within MMOGs is important
for research in scalable architectures for these systems. An accurate model of MMOGs’
players may help researchers to predict and simulate players’ behavior to facilitate the
design of systems amenable to them (Pittman and GauthierDickey 2007).
Fig. 1. The PFNET of online game related research. Articles ascribed to the same factor are painted with
the same color; the number by the node is the article’s number, and the number in the parenthesis is the
factor number which an article belongs to. Cyan nodes with (0) represent articles that are not assigned to
any factor. The label of a node is placed at the lower right side of the node. The node with label (1)195 is
placed at the upper right side of the node with betweenness centrality – (1)199.
The PFNET of the online game related researches is depicted in Figure 1. The num-
ber 199 article is the node with betweenness centrality (Linton 1977) in the PFNET.
The betweenness centrality represents the vertex through which the highest number
of shortest paths from all nodes to all others passed. The node with betweenness cen-
trality represents a paper contributing to a fundamental concept or combining multiple
research themes in this field. The title of this paper is “System Architecture for Billing
of Multi–Player Games in a Wireless Environment using GSM/UMTS and WLAN Ser-
vices,” which discussed the billing system architecture of multi-player wireless games.
The paper has referred articles that discuss latency issues of online games, which made
it ascribed to theme number one. Articles ascribed to theme number one are centrally
located in the PFNET, and they also collectively have the highest variances explained.
This dual property indicates theme number one (multiplayer game architecture) is the
most important as well as the most popular research theme in the online game research
3:16 T. T. Chen
Fig. 2. The betweenness center resides in the inner most circles. The colors of nodes are transcribed from
PFNET in Figure 1.
field. Research theme 12 (fairness preservation) and 17 (ISP QoS), both connected with
theme one, are closely related to the interactivity maintenance and latency reduction
studies, which are important issues addressed by the game architecture. However, they
are peripheral and less popular studies. The popularity of a research theme is propor-
tional to the variances explained by it in the PCA analysis, whereas the importance of
a theme is indicated by its position in the PFNET. A theme is peripheral if it is posi-
tioned on the fringe of the PFNET graph, which makes it bypassed by most of the paths
between themes. On the other hand, a centrally located theme, such as theme number
7, will be frequently utilized by other research themes. The betweenness centrality
makes the centrally located nodes positioned on the indispensable path that connects
other nodes. The number of paths passing a theme is an indicator of the importance
of this theme. We placed the betweenness center of the PFNET in a radial diagram
whereas the center resides in the inner most circles as shown in Figure 2. We take the
Fig. 3. The relative importance and popularity of the 25 research themes.
centrality of a theme as the metric for importance, which is measured as the number
of paths emanating from the betweenness center and passing through this theme to
reach other themes. Taking the theme number 2 (green-colored nodes) at the 12 o’clock
direction in Figure 2 as an illustrative example, we find nodes with three different col-
ors may be reached through green-colored nodes from the redial center. This indicates
theme number 2 is on the path between the radial center and three other themes that
makes the importance metric for theme number 2 to be three.
The relative importance and popularity of the 25 research themes are depicted in
Figure 3. The importance metric is marked in X axis and popularity marked in Y
axis. We may clearly see five of the most important research themes are: 1, 7, 25, 13,
and 3, which represents multiplayer game architecture, game induced network traffic
modeling, virtual demographic study of MMOGs, game bots detection and prevention,
and game additions and flow, respectively. The research themes ranked in order of their
popularity are: multiplayer game architecture, distributed object location and routing
architecture, game addictions and flow, technology acceptance modeling, and game
mediated learning. The study of multiplayer game architecture and game addictions
and flow are considered the mainstream research theme since they are both important
and popular.
4. DISCUSSION
The development of online games involves many disparate disciplines from technology,
art, entertainment, behavior sciences, psychology, and business. The disparateness of
online game related studies may have obscured the research perspective since a com-
prehensive research framework has not been found in the literature. By synthesizing
the discussed research themes and reviewed literature, we propose a research frame-
work for online games as shown in Figure 4.
4.1. The Research Framework of Online Games
The research framework depicted in Figure 4 encompasses all the research themes
discussed earlier. The network infrastructure provides communication services to the
platform architecture, which in turn offers mechanism and enabling services for game
applications. Avatars are controlled by the players as depicted by the dashed lines in
Figure 4. Players may be interacted with each other in the game, and their interaction
may go beyond the game application mediated communication channels by using blog,
3:18 T. T. Chen
Fig. 4. Online games research framework.
email, or social network services such as Facebook. The information and communication
technology (ICT) mediated interactions are shown by the solid lines in Figure 4. The
relationship may spill over to the real world from the virtual world and vice versa as
shown by the solid blue arrows.
The text box at the bottom of Figure 4 lists the network-related research themes,
which includes (game induced network) traffic modeling, traffic modeling for a spe-
cific type of game, network QoS for gaming, and communication protocols for gaming.
Network bandwidth conservation may be handled in the network layer by utilizing
IP multicast, or it may be handled in the game platform architecture layer by filter-
ing out-of-dated packets. The text box under the platform architecture pane includes
the distributed object location and routing infrastructure, upon which the multiplayer
game architecture may be built. The latency reducing and hiding, game states synchro-
nization and consistency preservation, bandwidth deduction, and fairness preservation
mechanisms are usually embedded in the platform architecture. The game applications
related research includes game design methodology (Hunicke, LeBlanc et al. 2004), de-
sign considerations specific to MMOG, virtual environment design, and cheating pre-
vention by design. The game application’s pane acts like a divider. The research themes
below the pane are IT related, whereas the studies above it are user related. The text
box immediately above the application pane at the left side lists user-related studies,
which include the demographic and psychological aspect of users’ studies, game addic-
tion and flow, technology acceptance modeling, and game mediated learning. The text
box on the right side above the game applications pane lists social behaviors related
studies. The social behaviors and interactions may occur in three ways: inside the game
applications, outside the game but mediated by ICT, and in the real world. These three
ways may be overlapped or combined in different ways. For example, players may ac-
quaint themselves with each other in a game and get together in the real world and
become friends, or friends may decide to play a game together and coordinate with each
other in playing the game.
The text box in the upper left corner in Figure 4 represents the business side of online
games, which may include business models and critical success factors for the game
business. There are very few literatures discussing the business side of online games.
The intriguing research questions would be: What are the successful business models
for game business? What kind of business models fit which types of game? Does the
game business differ from other kinds of business, and what are the implications for
business if they do differ?
4.2. Methodological Issues
The intellectual structure methodology takes the co-citation relationships as the clus-
tering basis. Two papers are related by co-citation if they are both cited by another
paper published later. Therefore, the co-citation relationships induce time-honored
cluster because there is a time lag for their build-up. Bibliographic coupling, which is
a derived relationship between two documents citing the same paper, can find more
recent research themes. The citation and its derived relationships against a timeline
are depicted in Figure 5. The co-citation relationship is applied in building the in-
tellectual structure because recurrent co-citation matters much in trying to establish
intellectual linkages in a research domain (White, Wellman et al. 2004). Co-citation
is the prevailing relatedness metric applied in mapping research domains’ intellectual
structure. However, the claim that a bibliographical coupling relationship is capable
of associating documents that have a similar research focus has been examined and
confirmed (Jarneving 2007). It has been shown that co-citation-based clustering shows
intellectual base while bibliographical coupling exposes research fronts (Persson 1994).
Therefore, we have also carried out an analysis using bibliographical coupling to com-
plement the result obtained from co-citation-based analysis.
4.3. Research Themes Uncovered Using Bibliographical Coupling Relationship
We apply an identical procedure on the same dataset but use the bibliographic coupling
matrix as the input of PCA. The research themes uncovered include some original
themes with up-to-date articles as well as novel themes. The top 20 research themes
are listed in Table II. The column captioned with “Matched Similar Theme” listed the
matching theme number(s) from Table I. The letter N stands for a new theme that has
no matched themes in Table I. New themes are briefly described with proper references.
Themes with matched theme(s) from Table I may be discussed briefly if the research
focus significantly deviates from its matching theme.
Theme B1 mainly discusses P2P-based infrastructure and architecture for real-time
interactive multi-player games. Most of the articles ascribed to theme B2 come from
the group of Roccetti, which include papers discussing a holistic approach to exploiting
the semantics of games in satisfying the demanding requirements of MMOG (Ferretti,
Palazzi et al. 2006), and a game event synchronization mechanism that accounts for ob-
solescent as well as correlated events (Ferretti and Roccetti 2005). Theme B6 includes
3:20 T. T. Chen
Fig. 5. Paper C cited two earlier papers A and B, which induce co-citation relationship between A and B.
Paper D and E cited paper C, which makes them bibliographically coupled.
papers that collect empirical data from MMOGs-based courses (Delwiche 2006). Ar-
ticles ascribed to theme B7 discuss interest management and zoning in P2P-based
MMOGs. Interest management and zoning issues have been covered implicitly in
theme 1 and 2 listed in Table I. Interest management refers to the management of
area of interest (AOI). AOI is based on the idea that a player needs to know what
is relevant to him or her, such as an avatar or building in his sight. Instead of the
conventional way of mapping the virtual space to AOI, a scheme of dynamically assign-
ing AOIs to virtual space is proposed (Ahmed and Shirmohammadi 2008). Knowledge
diffusion and sharing in the virtual world are among the research focus of articles
ascribed to theme B13 (Fields and Kafai 2007, Fields and Kafai 2009). Collaborative
behaviors of gamers in MMPRPGs are investigated to expose their daily gaming ac-
tivities and knowledge domains (Bennerstedt and Linderoth 2009). As mobile devices
with diverse capabilities (screen resolution, computing power, etc.) and disparate net-
work bandwidth abound, the common practice of demanding a minimal capability for
participating devices to play a real-time interactive multi-player game may not be de-
sirable. The lowest common denominator of devices will bring an unpleasant gaming
experience to many participants. Architecture is proposed by an article in theme B17
that progressively delivers game content to optimize user-perceived gaming experience
while taking the diverse devices’ capabilities into consideration (Li, Lau et al. 2011).
Theme B18 mainly discusses dynamic resource provisioning in MMOGs. A model for
estimating MMOG resource demand and matching the demand through dynamic re-
source provisioning is proposed (Nae, Iosup et al. 2011). Articles ascribed to theme
B21 study expert counter-strike (CS) players’ engagement, which facilitates conceiving
expert skill in human-computer-interaction (HCI) (Reeves, Brown et al. 2009). Infor-
mation interface and presentation that boost expert’s expertise in playing or working
is the ultimate objective for this CS HCI study. Theme B22 tries to develop a market
Table II. Research themes uncovered using bibliographical coupling.

# Theme Matched Similar Theme Variances Explained
B1 P2P-basedoverlay architecture for MMOGs 1,2 7.288
B2 Interactivity loss avoidance techniques 1,6 6.741
B3 Traffic modeling of first-person shooter (FPS) 10 3.966
games
B4 Game addition causes and remedies 3 3.412
B5 Cheating detection and prevention scheme 8 3.397
B6 MMOGs as an educational platform 5 2.318
B7 Interests management and zoning in N 2.206
P2P-based MMOGs
B8 Impacts of latency in online gaming 16 2.203
B9 User study of MMOPRGs 16 2.053
B10 Security design in online games 11 1.994
B11 Sociability in MMOGs 14 1.979
B12 Cheat-proof protocols 11 1.784
B13 Knowledge sharing and collaboration in N 1.759
MMORPGs
B14 Empirical psychological study of online 9 1.735
gaming
B15 Workload characterization in multiplayer 7 1.511
online games
B16 Game bot identification and detection 13 1.499
B17 Adaptive game architecture 1 1.437
B18 Resource provisioning for MMOGs N 1.357
B19 Secure event signature protocol for P2P 11 1.342
MMOGs
B20 Automatic internet traffic identification 7 1.296
B21 Understanding and designing for expert N 1.264
(game) skill
B22 Market segmentation for online game N 1.131
targeted customer
B23 Game with a purpose N 1.127
B24 Measuring social dynamics in MMOGs 21 1.074
B25 Effects of rich media (photo, voice etc.) on 18 1.045
gaming partner choice
segmentation methodology for the online game market (Lee, Xiang et al. 2005). Theme
B23 discusses paradigms for utilizing human via game settings to solve problems that
computers cannot solve yet (Ahn 2008). A game is described that shows two players
an image and asks them to guess what label the other player will tag it. The players
are randomly paired and cannot communicate with each other. A new image will be
presented to the players once they have given the exact same labeling string. A massive
MMOG dataset is utilized to study the social networks’ structure and their evolutions
by theme B24 (Szell and Thurner 2010). Theme B25 studies if rich media (media other
than text-based profile) affects gaming partner choice (Riegelsberger, Counts et al.
2006).
5. CONCLUSION
We applied a literature-structuring methodology to construct the intellectual structure
of online game related studies. This study utilized information scientists’ methodology
to identify 30 main research themes and discussed the top 25 themes in the online
game related studies field. The research themes are then complemented by new themes
3:22 T. T. Chen
that are uncovered by a complementary method. Based on the main research themes
identified, we developed an online game research framework, which encompassed the
main research themes we documented. This framework may not be conclusive, but
it provides a basis to frame current online game related studies. Our study provides
a comprehensive perspective of online game related research, which may facilitate
researchers gaining a broader view of this research field.
Following the framework we propose, online-game-related studies may be classified
into nine categories, each corresponding to a text box in Figure 4. These nine cate-
gories may be further grouped into two main categories. The information technology
related category includes network infrastructure studies, game platform architecture
studies, and game applications related studies. The user and social technological (socio-
technical) related category includes the studies of players and their behaviors and psy-
chological inclination, the ICT mediated social behaviors and activities both in and
outside the game, social behaviors and networking in the real world, and the business
side of online games. The interactions and communications in a game, through ICT,
and in the real world may intertwine and reinforce each other.
REFERENCES
Agarwal, R. and E. Karahanna (2000). “Time flies when you’re having fun: cognitive absorption and beliefs
about information technology usage.” Management Information Systems Quarterly 24(4): 665–694.
Ahmed, D. T. and S. Shirmohammadi (2008). A Dynamic Area of Interest Management and Collaboration
Model for P2P MMOGs. Proceedings of the 2008 12th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Dis-
tributed Simulation and Real-Time Applications, IEEE Computer Society: 27–34.
Ahn, L. v. (2008). Human Computation. Data Engineering, 2008. ICDE 2008. IEEE 24th International
Conference on.
Armitage, G. J. (2003). An experimental estimation of latency sensitivity in multiplayer Quake 3. Networks,
2003. ICON2003. The 11th IEEE International Conference on.
Bartle, R. (1996). “Hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades: Players who suit MUDs.” Journal of MUD research 1(1):
19.
Baughman, N. E., M. Liberatore and B. N. Levine (2007). “Cheat-proof playout for centralized and peer-to-
peer gaming.” IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 15(1): 1–13.
Beigbeder, T., R. Coughlan, C. Lusher, J. Plunkett, E. Agu and M. Claypool (2004). The effects of loss and
latency on user performance in unreal tournament 2003. Proceedings of 3rd ACM SIGCOMM workshop
on Network and system support for games. Portland, Oregon, USA, ACM: 144–151.
Bennerstedt, U. and J. Linderoth (2009). The spellbound ones: illuminating everyday collaborative gaming
practices in a MMORPG. Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Computer supported collab-
orative learning - Volume 1. Rhodes, Greece, International Society of the Learning Sciences: 404–413.
Bernier, Y. W. (2001). Latency compensating methods in client/server in-game protocol design and optimiza-
tion. Game Developers Conference, San Jose, California, USA.
Bharambe, A., J. Pang and S. Seshan (2006). Colyseus: a distributed architecture for online multiplayer
games. Proceedings of the 3rd conference on Networked Systems Design & Implementation - Volume 3.
San Jose, CA, USENIX Association: 12–12.
Brown, B. and M. Bell (2004). CSCW at play: ‘there’ as a collaborative virtual environment. Proceedings of the
2004 ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work. Chicago, Illinois, USA, ACM: 350–359.
Carlson, S. (2006). “Challenging Google, Microsoft Unveils a Search Tool for Scholarly Articles.” Chronicle of
Higher Education 52(33): 1.
Castro, M., P. Druschel, A.-M. Kermarrec and A. I. T. Rowstron (2002). “SCRIBE: A large-scale and decen-
tralized application-level multicast infrastructure.” Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Journal
on 20(8): 1489–1499.
Chappell, D., V. Eatough, M. N. O. Davies and M. Griffiths (2006). “EverQuest—It’s just a computer game
right? An interpretative phenomenological analysis of online gaming addiction.” International Journal
of Mental Health and Addiction 4(3): 205–216.
Chen, K.-T., P. Huang, C.-Y. Huang and C.-L. Lei (2005). Game traffic analysis: an MMORPG perspective.
Proceedings of the international workshop on Network and operating systems support for digital audio
and video. Stevenson, Washington, USA, ACM: 19–24.
Chen, K.-t., J.-w. Jiang, P. Huang, H.-h. Chu, C.-l. Lei and W.-c. Chen (2009). “Identifying MMORPG bots: A
traffic analysis approach.” EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing 2009: 3.
Chen, T. T. (2012). “The development and empirical study of a literature review aiding system.” Scientometrics
92(1): 105–116.
Chen, T. T. and L. C. Xie (2005). Identifying critical focuses in research domains. Ninth International
Conference on Information Visualisation (IV05), London, IEEE Computer Society.
Chen, T. T. and D. C. Yen (2009). Technical Research Themes of the Mobile Ubiquitous Computing. Mobile
Business, 2009. ICMB 2009. Eighth International Conference on.
Choi, D. and J. Kim (2004). “Why people continue to play online games: In search of critical design factors to
increase customer loyalty to online contents.” CyberPsychology & Behavior 7(1): 11–24.
Chou, T.-J. and C.-C. Ting (2003). “The role of flow experience in cyber-game addiction.” CyberPsychology &
Behavior 6(6): 663–675.
Claypool, M. (2005). “The effect of latency on user performance in real-time strategy games.” Computer
Networks 49(1): 52–70.
Cole, H. and M. D. Griffiths (2007). “Social interactions in massively multiplayer online role-playing gamers.”
CyberPsychology & Behavior 10(4): 575–583.
Coleman, J. S. (1988). “Social capital in the creation of human capital.” American Journal of Sociology:
95–120.
Compeau, D., C. A. Higgins and S. L. Huff (1999). “Social cognitive theory and individual reactions to
computing technology: A longitudinal study.” Management Information Systems Quarterly: 145–158.
Cronin, E., B. Filstrup, A. R. Kurc and S. Jamin (2002). An efficient synchronization mechanism for mir-
rored game architectures. Proceedings of the 1st workshop on Network and system support for games.
Braunschweig, Germany, ACM: 67–73.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1975). Beyond Boredom and Anxiety, Jossey-Bass Publishers San Francisco, CA.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1991). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience, Harper Perennial.
Dabek, F., R. Cox, F. Kaashoek and R. Morris (2004). Vivaldi: a decentralized network coordinate system.
Proceedings of the 2004 conference on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer
communications. Portland, Oregon, USA, ACM: 15–26.
Davis, F. D. (1989). “Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technol-
ogy.” Management Information Systems Quarterly: 319–340.
Delwiche, A. (2006). “Massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) in the new media classroom.” Journal of
Educational Technologyand Society 9(3): 13.
Dick, M., O. Wellnitz and L. Wolf (2005). Analysis of factors affecting players’ performance and perception
in multiplayer games. Proceedings of 4th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for
games. Hawthorne, NY, ACM: 1–7.
Ducheneaut, N. and R. J. Moore (2004). The social side of gaming: a study of interaction patterns in a
massively multiplayer online game. Proceedings of the 2004 ACM conference on Computer supported
cooperative work. Chicago, Illinois, USA, ACM: 360–369.
Ducheneaut, N., N. Yee, E. Nickell and R. J. Moore (2006). “Alone together?”: exploring the social dynamics
of massively multiplayer online games. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in
computing systems. Montréal, Québec, Canada, ACM: 407–416.
Färber, J. (2004). “Traffic modelling for fast action network games.” Multimedia Tools and Applications 23(1):
31–46.
Feng, W.-c., F. Chang, W.-c. Feng and J. Walpole (2005). “A traffic characterization of popular on-line games.”
IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 13(3): 488–500.
Ferretti, S., C. E. Palazzi, M. Roccetti, G. Pau and M. Gerla (2006). “FILA in gameland, a holistic approach
to a problem of many dimensions.” Comput. Entertain. 4(4): 8.
Ferretti, S., C. E. Palazzi, M. Roccetti, G. Pau. and M. Gerla (2006). Buscar el levante por el poniente: in search
of fairness through interactivity in massively multiplayer online games. Consumer Communications and
Networking Conference, 2006. CCNC 2006. 3rd IEEE.
Ferretti, S. and M. Roccetti (2005). Fast delivery of game events with an optimistic synchronization mecha-
nism in massive multiplayer online games. Proceedings of the 2005 ACM SIGCHI International Confer-
ence on Advances in computer entertainment technology. Valencia, Spain, ACM: 405–412.
Ferretti, S., M. Roccetti and C. E. Palazzi (2007). “An optimistic obsolescence-based approach to event synchro-
nization for massively multiplayer online games.” International Journal of Computers and Applications
29(1): 33–43.
3:24 T. T. Chen
Fields, D. and Y. Kafai (2009). “A Connective Ethnography of Peer Knowledge Sharing and Diffusion in a
Tween Virtual World.” International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 4(1): 47–68.
Fields, D. A. and Y. B. Kafai (2007). Tracing insider knowledge across time and spaces: a connective ethnog-
raphy in a teen online game world. Proceedings of the 8th iternational conference on Computer sup-
ported collaborative learning. New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA, International Society of the Learning
Sciences: 199–208.
Garfield, E., I. H. Sher and R. J. Torpie (1964). “The use of citation data in writing the history of science.”
Institute for Scientific Information.
Gaudiosi, J. (2012). “New Reports Forecast Global Video Game Industry Will Reach $82 Billion By 2017.” Re-
trieved July 25, 2012, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2012/07/18/new-reports-forecasts-
global-video-game-industry-will-reach-82-billion-by-2017/.
Gee, J. P. (2003). “What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy.” Computers in Entertain-
ment (CIE) 1(1): 20–20.
Ghani, J. A. (1995). Flow in Human Computer Interactions: Test of a model, Ablex Publishing Corp., New
Jersey.
Ghani, J. A. and S. P. Deshpande (1994). “Task Characteristics and the Experience of Optimal Flow in
Human—Computer Interaction.” The Journal of psychology 128(4): 381–391.
Golle, P. and N. Ducheneaut (2005). “Preventing bots from playing online games.” Computers in Entertain-
ment (CIE) 3(3): 1–10.
Granovetter, M. S. (1973). “The strength of weak ties.” American j=Journal of Sociology: 1360–1380.
Griffiths, M. D., M. N. O. Davies and D. Chappell (2004). “Demographic factors and playing variables in
online computer gaming.” CyberPsychology & Behavior 7(4): 479–487.
Griffiths, M. D., M. N. O. Davies and D. Chappell (2004). “Online computer gaming: a comparison of adolescent
and adult gamers.” Journal of Adolescence 27(1): 87–96.
Grüsser, S. M., R. Thalemann and M. D. Griffiths (2006). “Excessive computer game playing: Evidence for
addiction and aggression?” CyberPsychology & Behavior 10(2): 290–292.
Guo, K., S. Mukherjee, S. Rangarajan and S. Paul (2003). A fair message exchange framework for distributed
multi-player games. Proceedings of the 2nd workshop on Network and system support for games. Redwood
City, California, ACM: 29–41.
Hunicke, R., M. LeBlanc and R. Zubek (2004). MDA: A formal approach to game design and game re-
search. Proceedings of the Challenges in Game AI Workshop, Nineteenth National Conference on Artificial
Intelligence.
Jakobsson, M. and T. L. Taylor (2003). The Sopranos meets EverQuest: social networking in massively
multiplayer online games. Design Automation Conference, Anaheim, CA, USA.
Jarneving, B. (2007). “Bibliographic coupling and its application to research-front and other core documents.”
Journal of Informetrics 1(4): 287–307.
Kabus, P., W. W. Terpstra, M. Cilia and A. P. Buchmann (2005). Addressing cheating in distributed MMOGs.
Proceedings of 4th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games. Hawthorne,
NY, ACM: 1–6.
Kawahara, Y., T. Aoyama and H. Morikawa (2004). “A peer-to-peer message exchange scheme for large-scale
networked virtual environments.” Telecommunication Systems 25(3): 353–370.
Knutsson, B., H. Lu, W. Xu and B. Hopkins (2004). Peer-to-peer support for massively multiplayer games.
INFOCOM 2004. Twenty-third AnnualJoint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications
Societies.
Lang, T., P. Branch and G. Armitage (2004). A synthetic traffic model for Quake3. Proceedings of the 2004
ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology. Singapore,
ACM: 233–238.
Lee, M. R. and T. T. Chen (2012). “Revealing research themes and trends in knowledge management: From
1995 to 2010.” Knowledge-Based Systems 28(0): 47–58.
Lee, S.-C., J.-Y. Xiang and L.-B. Jing (2005). Who are the Target Customers in Chinese Online Game
Market?: Segmentation with a Two-Step Approach. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference
on e-Business Engineering, IEEE Computer Society: 736–743.
Léty, E. and T. Turletti (1999). Issues in Designing a Communication Architecture for Large-Scale Virtual
Environments. Proceedings of the First International COST264 Workshop on Networked Group Commu-
nication, Springer-Verlag: 54–71.
Li, F. W. B., R. W. H. Lau, D. Kilis and L. W. F. Li (2011). “Game-on-demand:: An online game engine based
on geometry streaming.” ACM Trans. Multimedia Comput. Commun. Appl. 7(3): 1–22.
Lin, Y.-J., K. Guo and S. Paul (2002). Sync-MS: synchronized messaging service for real-time multi-player
distributed games. Network Protocols, 2002. Proceedings. 10th IEEE International Conference on.
Linton, C. F. (1977). “A Set of Measures of Centrality Based on Betweenness.” Sociometry 40(1): 35–41.
Mason, B. (1999). “Issues in virtual ethnography.” Ethnographic Studies in Real and Virtual Environments
Inhabited Information Spaces and Connected Communities(Cherny 8): 61–69.
Monch, C., G. Grimen and R. Midtstraum (2006). Protecting online games against cheating. Proceedings of
5th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games. Singapore, ACM: 20.
Müller, J. and S. Gorlatch (2006). “Rokkatan: scaling an RTS game design to the massively multiplayer
realm.” Computers in Entertainment (CIE) 4(3): 11.
Nae, V., A. Iosup and R. Prodan (2011). “Dynamic Resource Provisioning in Massively Multiplayer Online
Games.” IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems 22: 380–395.
Nardi, B. and J. Harris (2006). Strangers and friends: collaborative play in world of warcraft. Proceedings of
the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work. Banff, Alberta, Canada,
ACM: 149–158.
Ng, B. D. and P. Wiemer-Hastings (2005). “Addiction to the internet and online gaming.” CyberPsychology
and Behavior 8(2): 110.
Ng, T. S. E. and Z. Hui (2002). Predicting Internet network distance with coordinates-based approaches.
INFOCOM 2002. Twenty-First Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications
Societies. Proceedings. IEEE.
Oliveira, M. and T. Henderson (2003). What online gamers really think of the Internet? Proceedings of the
2nd workshop on Network and system support for games. Redwood City, California, ACM: 185–193.
Persson, O. (1994). “The intellectual base and research fronts of JASIS 1986–1990.” Journal of the American
Society for Information Science 45(1): 31–38.
Pittman, D. and C. GauthierDickey (2007). A measurement study of virtual populations in massively multi-
player online games. Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support
for games. Melbourne, Australia, ACM: 25–30.
Price, D. J. d. S. (1965). “Networks of Scientific Papers.” Science 149(3683): 510–515.
Pritchard, M. (2000). “How to hurt the hackers: The scoop on Internet cheating and how you can combat it.”
Gamasutra, July 24.
Putnam, R. D. (2001). Bowling Alone: The collapse and revival of American community, Simon and Schuster.
Reeves, S., B. Brown and E. Laurier (2009). “Experts at play: Understanding skilled expertise.” Games and
Culture 4(3): 205–227.
Reportlinker. (2012). “Global Online Gaming Report 2012.” Retrieved July 25, 2012, from http://finance.
yahoo.com/news/global-online-gaming-report-2012-121200191.html.
Riegelsberger, J., S. Counts, S. D. Farnham and B. C. Philips (2006). Sounds good to me: effects of photo
and voice profiles on gaming partner choice. Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on
Computer supported cooperative work. Banff, Alberta, Canada, ACM: 159–162.
Rowstron, A. and P. Druschel (2001). Pastry: Scalable, Decentralized Object Location, and Routing for Large-
Scale Peer-to-Peer Systems. Middleware 2001. R. Guerraoui, Springer Berlin Heidelberg. 2218: 329–350.
Schvaneveldt, R. W. (1990). Pathfinder Associative Networks: Studies in knowledge organizations. Norwood,
N.J., Ablex Pub. Corp.
Singhal, S. and M. Zyda (1999). Networked Virtual Environments: Design and implementation. Michigan,
Addison-Wesley.
Singhal, S. K. and D. R. Cheriton (1996). Using projection aggregations to support scalability in distributed
simulation. Distributed Computing Systems, 1996., Proceedings of the 16th International Conference
on.
Small, H. (1973). “Co-citation in the scientific literature: A new measure of the relationship between two
documents.” Journal of the American Society for information Science 24(4): 265–269.
Small, H. (1977). “A Co-Citation Model of a Scientific Specialty: A Longitudinal Study of Collagen Research.”
Social Studies of Science 7(2): 139–166.
Steinkuehler, C. A. (2004). Learning in massively multiplayer online games. Proceedings of the 6th interna-
tional conference on Learning sciences. Santa Monica, California, International Society of the Learning
Sciences: 521–528.
Steinkuehler, C. A. (2007). “Massively multiplayer online gaming as a constellation of literacy practices.”
E-Learning and Digital Media 4(3): 297–318.
Steinkuehler, C. A. and D. Williams (2006). “Where everybody knows your (screen) name: Online games as
“third places”.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 11(4): 885–909.
3:26 T. T. Chen
Stevens, J. (1999). Applied Multivariate Statistics for the Social Sciences. New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
Stoica, I., R. Morris, D. Karger, M. F. Kaashoek. and H. Balakrishnan (2001). “Chord: A scalable peer-to-
peer lookup service for internet applications.” ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 31(4):
149–160.
Sutter, J. D. (2012). “5 warning signs of gaming addiction.” Gaming Reality Retrieved August 7, 2012, from
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/05/tech/gaming-gadgets/gaming-addiction-warning-signs/index.html.
Szell, M. and S. Thurner (2010). “Measuring social dynamics in a massive multiplayer online game.” Social
Networks 32(4): 313–329.
Taylor, T. L. (2003). Power games just want to have fun?: instrumental play in a MMOG. Level Up Con-
ference Proceedings: Proceedings of the 2003 Digital Games Research Association Conference. Utrecht,
University of Utrecht.
Trevino, L. K. and J. Webster (1992). “Flow in Computer-Mediated Communication Electronic Mail and Voice
Mail Evaluation and Impacts.” Communication Research 19(5): 539–573.
Venkatesh, V. (2000). “Determinants of perceived ease of use: Integrating control, intrinsic motivation, and
emotion into the technology acceptance model.” Information Systems Research 11(4): 342–365.
Wan, C.-S. and W.-B. Chiou (2006). “Why are adolescents addicted to online gaming? An interview study in
Taiwan.” CyberPsychology & Behavior 9(6): 762–766.
Webb, S. D. and S. Soh (2007). Cheating in networked computer games: a review. Proceedings of the 2nd
international conference on Digital interactive media in entertainment and arts. Perth, Australia, ACM:
105–112.
Webster, J. and R. T. Watson (2002). “Analyzing the past to prepare for the future: Writing a literature
review.” Management Information Systems Quarterly 26(2): 3.
White, H. D. and B. C. Griffith (1981). “Author cocitation: A literature measure of intellectual structure.”
Journal of the American Society for Information Science 32(3): 163–171.
White, H. D., B. Wellman and N. Nazer (2004). “Does citation reflect social structure?: Longitudinal evidence
from the “Globenet” interdisciplinary research group.” Journal of the American Society for Information
Science and Technology 55(2): 111–126.
Williams, D. (2006). “Groups and goblins: The social and civic impact of an online game.” Journal of Broad-
casting & Electronic Media 50(4): 651–670.
Yan, J. (2003). Security design in online games. Computer Security Applications Conference, 2003. Proceed-
ings. 19th Annual.
Yan, J. and H.-J. Choi (2002). “Security issues in online games.” The Electronic Library, 20(2): 125–133.
Yan, J. and B. Randell (2005). A systematic classification of cheating in online games. Proceedings of 4th
ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games. Hawthorne, NY, ACM: 1–9.
Yeung, S. F., J. C. S. Lui, J. Liu and J. Yan (2006). Detecting cheaters for multiplayer games: theory, design
and implementation. Consumer Communications and Networking Conference, 2006. CCNC 2006. 3rd
IEEE.
Zander, S. and G. Armitage (2004). Empirically measuring the QoS sensitivity of interactive online game
players. The Australian Telecommunications Networks and Applications Conference, Bondi Beach,
Sydney, Australia.
Zander, S. and G. Armitage (2005). A traffic model for the Xbox game Halo 2. Proceedings of the international
workshop on Network and operating systems support for digital audio and video. Stevenson, Washington,
USA, ACM: 13–18.
Zander, S., I. Leeder and G. Armitage (2005). Achieving fairness in multiplayer network games through au-
tomated latency balancing. Proceedings of the 2005 ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances
in computer entertainment technology. Valencia, Spain, ACM: 117–124.
Zhao, B. Y., J. D. Kubiatowicz and A. D. Joseph (2001). Tapestry: An Infrastructure for Fault-tolerant Wide-
area Location and Routing, University of California at Berkeley.
View publication stats

Online Games: Computers in Entertainment February 2015

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Online Games: Computers in Entertainment February 2015

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Online Games: Computers in Entertainment February 2015

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

Article in Computers in Entertainment · February 2015

Tsung Teng Chen

NSC project 102- 2410-H-305-070 View project

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Contact Author’s email address: dangkang@kmd.keio.ac.jp.

3.1. Multiplayer Game Architecture – Maintaining Interactivity

3.2. Distributed Object Location and Routing Infrastructure

3.5. Game Mediated Learning

3.6. Latency Hiding and Bandwidth Deduction Mechanism

3.7. (Game induced) Network Traffic Modeling

Fig. 3. The relative importance and popularity of the 25 research themes.

Fig. 4. Online games research framework.

Table II. Research themes uncovered using bibliographical coupling.

View publication stats

You might also like