A Face Recognition Based Multiplayer Mobile Game Application

In this paper, we present a multiplayer mobile game application that aims at enabling individuals play paintball or laser tag style games using their smartphones. In the application, face detection and recognition technologies are utilised to detect and identify the individuals, respectively. In the game, first, one of the players starts the game and invites the others to join. Once everyone joins the game, they receive a notification for the training stage, at which they need to record another player’s face for a short time. After the completion of the training stage, the players can start shooting each other, that is, direct the smartphone to another user and when the face is visible, press the shoot button on the screen. Both the shooter and the one who is shot are notified by the system after a successful hit. To realise this game in real-time, fast and robust face detection and face recognition algorithms have been employed. The face recognition performance of the system is benchmarked on the face data collected from the game, when it is played with up to ten players. It is found that the system is able to identify the players with a success rate of around or over 90% depending on the number of players in the game.