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Server Allocation for Massively Multiplayer Online Cloud Games Using Evolutionary Optimization

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Published:11 May 2021Publication History
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Abstract

In recent years, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) are becoming popular, partially due to their sophisticated graphics and broad virtual world, and cloud gaming is demanded more than ever especially when entertaining with light and portable devices. This article considers the problem of server allocation for running MMOG on cloud, aiming to reduce the cost on cloud gaming service and meanwhile enhance the quality of service. The problem is formulated into minimizing an objective function involving the cost of server rental, the cost of data transfer and the network latency during the gaming time. A genetic algorithm is developed to solve the minimization problem for processing simultaneous server allocation for the players who log into the system at the same time while many existing players are playing the same game. Extensive experiments based on the player behavior in “World of Warcraft” are conducted to evaluate the proposed method and compare with the state-of-the-art as well. The experimental results show that the method gives a lower cost and a shorter network latency in most of the time.

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      • Published in

        cover image ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications
        ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications  Volume 17, Issue 2
        May 2021
        410 pages
        ISSN:1551-6857
        EISSN:1551-6865
        DOI:10.1145/3461621
        Issue’s Table of Contents

        Copyright © 2021 ACM

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        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 11 May 2021
        • Revised: 1 October 2020
        • Accepted: 1 October 2020
        • Received: 1 April 2020
        Published in tomm Volume 17, Issue 2

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