Game server selection for multiple players

The increase in power and connectivity of computers has enabled a growth in network games, with many games having numerous servers to which a player can connect. The game server selected influences the game play, both by impacting the game type and map choice as well as the connection latency and server performance. Often, geographically spread-out friends, family and clan members want to play together on a centrally-located game server with good performance. Unfortunately, current game server selection tools only consider the perspective of a single client, with multiple players left to coordinate their game server selection manually through an out-of-band means, such as telephone or online chat. This manual server coordination process is time-consuming, at best, and error-prone, at worst, often resulting in the selection of a poorly performing game server. This paper presents an architecture that allows geographically dispersed players that want to play together to select the best ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: NETGAMES
• Authors: Steven Gargolinski, Christopher St. Pierre, Mark Claypool
• Keywords: Game Play, Game Server, Game Server Selection, NETGAMES 2005