The Effects of Network Latency on the Peeker's Advantage in First-person Shooter Games
In first-person shooter (FPS) games, the peeker's advantage is the edge the moving peeker gets when battling a stationary defender at a corner due to network latency. However, confirmation of (the size of) this advantage based on network latency and the distance from the corner has not been studied. This paper assesses the peeker's advantage via two user studies both using an open-source FPS game extended to support two-player networking and a custom map. Users play as both peeker and defender with 3 different corner distances and 3 different network latencies. Analysis of hits, wins, and time-to-damage shows that the advantage for the peeker is impacted more by the defender's latency than the peeker's latency and is lowest when the peeker is nearest the corner. The user study with a tournament setting had quicker and more competitive matches resulting in more combat encounters and closer games than did the traditional user study.
