Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

5-2015

Abstract

Mobile games, and especially multiplayer games are a very popular daily distraction for many users. We hypothesise that commuters travelling on public buses or trains would enjoy being able to play multiplayer games with their fellow commuters to alleviate the commute burden and boredom. We present quantitative data to show that the typical one-way commute time is fairly long (at least 25 minutes on average) as well as survey results indicating that commuters are willing to play multiplayer games with other random commuters. In this paper, we present GameOn, a system that allows commuters to participate in multiplayer games with each other using p2p networking techniques that reduces the need to use high latency and possibly expensive cellular data connections. We show how GameOn uses a cloud-based matchmaking server to eliminate the overheads of discovery as well as show why GameOn uses Wi-Fi Direct over Bluetooth as the p2p networking medium. We describe the various system components of GameOn and their implementation. Finally, we present numerous results collected by using GameOn, with three real games, on many different public trains and buses with up to four human players in each game play.

Keywords

Mobile games, multiplayer games, commuting, public transport

Discipline

Computer Sciences | Software Engineering

Research Areas

Software and Cyber-Physical Systems

Publication

MobiSys '15: Proceedings of the 13th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services: May 19-22, 2015, Florence, Italy

First Page

105

Last Page

119

ISBN

9781450334945

Identifier

10.1145/2742647.2742660

Publisher

ACM

City or Country

New York

Embargo Period

11-8-2016

Additional URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2742647.2742660

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