International Journal of Computer Games Technology
Volume 2008 (2008), Article ID 642314, 9 pages
doi:10.1155/2008/642314
Research Article
The Playing Session: Enhanced Playability for Mobile Gamers in Massive Metaverses
Department of Computer Science, University of Bologna, Mura A. Zamboni 7, 40127 Bologna, Italy
Received 31 January 2008; Revised 14 April 2008; Accepted 23 May 2008
Academic Editor: Jouni Smed
Copyright © 2008 S. Cacciaguerra and G. D'Angelo. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Internet ubiquity and the success of mobile gaming devices are increasing the interest in wireless access to virtual environments. Mainly due to the mobility factor and wireless medium features, traditional gaming architectures are not enough to guarantee good levels of playability and fairness to mobile gamers. We suggest a new mechanism, called playing session, capable of controlling communications between mobile devices and the game infrastructure. In case of network failures, a mimicking mechanism is in charge of playing, until the communication channel is restored. The goal is to reproduce, with an adequate level of mimesis, the user behavior. According to this approach, it will be possible to enhance the overall playability of Internet games without requiring any modification to the existing communication infrastructure.