Gamers as individuals

It is important for game providers to understand the usage behavior of its players in order to adequately address their needs. In order to study player characteristics, we analyze the trace of cs.mshmro.com to track individual gamers throughout their play cycle. Specifically, we track gamers attempting to connect to the server, gamers playing on the server, and the likelihood of a gamer returning to the server.

We first demonstrate that gamers are difficult to please. In particular, they 1) have no tolerance for busy servers, often connecting once while the server is busy and never reconnecting again for the entire trace, 2) have very specific gameplay needs and if those needs are not met in the first few minutes of play, their likelihood of continuing to play at the server drops off dramatically, and 3) they often have no loyalty or sense of community tied to a specific server and do not return after playing a handful of times. For those that do return often, we also demonstrate that their session times show a marked decline and their session interarrival times show a marked increase just as they are ready to quit playing on the server altogether.