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SIG NetGame

Over the past three to four years networked computer games have been a tremendous commercial success. Games like Ultima Online, Everquest, Doom, Quake, Diablo II and others have attracted an audience of several million players, worldwide. They are one of the few Internet services for which end users are actually willing to pay money. As the Internet becomes ubiquitous through wireless and/or cheaper Internet access the the audience for networked computer games will increase rapidly, creating a mass market with a multi-billion dollar volume.

However, most - if not all - of the successful networked computer games have encountered a large number of technical challenges that are inherent to this application area. These range from inadequate support by network and transport protocols to consistency problems and security breaches (or cheating as players prefer to call it). At the same time scientists have begun to discover networked computer games as an extremely challenging and rewarding area of research. What makes this area of research particularly fascinating is that solutions found for networked computer games tend to solve related problems in other areas such as computer supported collaborative work, distance education and telemedicine.

It is the aim of this SIG to bring together developers of commercial and non-commercial networked computer games, service providers, scientists, and interested individuals in order to discuss - and possibly solve - technical challenges of networked computer games. Topics of interest include, but are certainly not limited to:

network and transport protocols
application-level protocol design
architectures for service providers
consistency mechanisms
security / cheating prevention
middle-ware (e.g. Direct Play)
billing and charging

... for networked computer games.

mauve@informatik.uni.mannheim.de