An experimental estimation of latency sensitivity in multiplayer Quake 3

Quantifying the latency sensitivity of potential customers/players is critical for Internet-based game providers when planning the network placement of their game servers. In early 2001 we placed two Quake 3 servers at different locations on the Internet, and instrumented them to gather median latency information on every player who played over a multimonth period. Comparison of server logfiles showed an active yet distinct player population on each server, and the median latency distributions suggest players actively prefer Quake 3 servers less than 150 to 180 milliseconds from the player's location. Quake 3 is often played as a multiplayer, Internetbased, highly interactive “first person shooter” game. Although Quake 3 is nowhere near as popular as games such as Halflife: CounterStrike, we believe our results provide a useful ballpark indicator of latency sensitivity for this class of highly interactive online games.