The future of distributed gaming : technical advantages and user-centred design

There is a potential demand for networked interactive media solutions that enable the rendering of PC games on set-top boxes, PDAs or low-cost CE devices. The ames@Large (G@L) project has been developing such a solution that would enable pervasive accessibility of interactive media from low-end devices. This paper describes the G@L framework and presents an experiment comparing user experience of G@L 3D-grahics streaming with a state-of-the-art video streaming solution. Subjects played three games using either G@L or StreamMyGame and self-reports of the acceptability of game graphics were compared. Depending on the game, the image quality of the G@L 3D-streaming protocol was perceived as being as good as or significantly better than state-of-the-art video streaming. Future studies will further explore the advantages and possible limitations of the G@L system with a wider range of games and users.