Perceptual view inconsistency: An objective evaluation framework for online game quality of experience (QoE)

The ultimate goal of both game developers and network engineers is to provide a satisfactory quality of experience (QoE) for players. Most past works resort the subjective approaches to assess QoE which have serious limitations. But because of the interdependency of the quality metrics on game playability and the involvement of many players' subjective factors, defining an objective evaluation methodology for QoE faces some challenges. This paper presents an objective evaluation framework for QoE which based on our insights into the causal relationships between network delay, system consistency and QoE. First we breakdown QoE into three basic properties, then we propose to link a player's perception of quality to a novel definition of inconsistency that can then be matched with the three basic properties. Corresponding metrics are created to quantify the inconsistencies. Taking these objective inconsistencies as input, and the subjective QoE properties as output, a mapping function is derived. After aggregating the QoE properties that capture the quality of a single game scenario, we sum the weighted QoE of all the game scenarios to obtain a final overall objective playability evaluation of a game.