Name
Abstract | ||
|---|---|---|
MMORPGs have become extremely popular among network gamers. Despite their success, one of MMORPG's great- est challenges is the increasing use of game bots, i.e., auto- playing game clients. The use of game bots is considered unsportsmanlike and is therefore forbidden. To keep games in order, game police, played by actual human players, of- ten patrol game zones and question suspicious players. This practice, however, is labor-intensive and ineffective. To ad- dress this problem, we analyze the traffic generated by hu- man players vs. game bots and propose solutions to auto- matically identify game bots. Taking Ragnarok Online, one of the most popular MMOGs, as our subject, we study the traffic generated by mainstream game bots and human players. We find that their traffic is distinguishable by: 1) the regularity in the release time of client commands, 2) the trend and magnitude of traffic burstiness in multiple time scales, and 3) the sensitivity to network conditions. We propose four strategies and two in- tegrated schemes to identify bots. For our data sets, the conservative scheme completely avoids making false accusa- tions against bona fide players, while the progressive scheme tracks game bots down more aggressively. Finally, we show that the proposed methods are generalizable to other games and robust against counter-measures from bot developers. |
Year | DOI | Venue |
|---|---|---|
2009 | 10.1155/2009/797159 | Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology |
Keywords | Field | DocType |
traffic analysis approach,identifying mmorpg bots,human player,traffic burstiness,different network condition,actual human player,game bots,game police,patrol game zone,bot developer,autoplaying game client,increasing use | Countermeasure,Traffic analysis,Computer security,Computer science,Robustness (computer science),Burstiness,Packet switching,Screening game,Role playing,Network conditions | Journal |
Volume | Issue | ISSN |
2009, | 1 | 1687-6180 |
ISBN | Citations | PageRank |
1-59593-380-8 | 50 | 3.35 |
References | Authors | |
20 | 6 | |
Name | Order | Citations | PageRank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kuan-Ta Chen | 1 | 1896 | 136.86 |
| Jhih-Wei Jiang | 2 | 51 | 3.85 |
| Polly Huang | 3 | 886 | 82.35 |
| Hao-Hua Chu | 4 | 1168 | 98.54 |
| Chin-Laung Lei | 5 | 1686 | 201.07 |
| Wen-chin Chen | 6 | 321 | 54.84 |