Tech Reports

Tech Report kmi-02-02 Abstract

Presence Based Massively Multiplayer Games Exploration of a new concept
Techreport ID: kmi-02-02
Date: 2002
Author(s): Yanna Vogiazou

The advances of new technologies and the convergence of different communication media are constantly changing not only our means and modes of communication with other people, but the notion of connectivity itself. Rather that being online or offline, we can be ‘connected’ in many different ways and without directly interacting with technology itself. ‘Presence’ awareness, facilitated by Instant Messaging applications, mobile phones, wireless handheld devices, location tracking and so on, makes someone reachable almost at any time. This research aims to explore the notion of presence on a massive scale in the online and wireless world. In order to set the stage this study draws upon a variety of areas: Instant Messaging, social psychology, massively multiplayer games, game design, wireless communication and location based games. We propose further experimentation with the design of multiplayer games for large numbers of participants; starting from a few tens in order to expand to hundreds or even thousands of people. This report puts the research aims in perspective and illustrates how experimentation with a massively multiplayer game will provide the necessary design insight for presence-based play.

Future Internet

Knowledge
Management Multimedia &
Information Systems Narrative
Hypermedia New Media Systems Semantic Web &
Knowledge Services

Future Internet is...

With over a billion users, today's Internet is arguably the most successful human artifact ever created. The Internet's physical infrastructure, software, and content now play an integral part of the lives of everyone on the planet, whether they interact with it directly or not. Now nearing its fifth decade, the Internet has shown remarkable resilience and flexibility in the face of ever increasing numbers of users, data volume, and changing usage patterns, but faces growing challenges in meetings the needs of our knowledge society. Globally, many major initiatives are underway to address the need for more scientific research, physical infrastructure investment, better education, and better utilisation of the Internet. Within Japan, USA and Europe major new initiatives have begun in the area.

To succeed the Future Internet will need to address a number of cross-cutting challenges including:

Scalability in the face of peer-to-peer traffic, decentralisation, and increased openness

Trust when government, medical, financial, personal data are increasingly trusted to the cloud, and middleware will increasingly use dynamic service selection