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.
- 2014. World of Warcraft subscriptions back over 10 million. https://sea.ign.com/world-of-warcraft-warlords-of-draenor/84364/news/world-of- warcraft-subscriptions-back-over-10-million.Google Scholar
- 2019. Amazon Web Services. https://aws.amazon.com.Google Scholar
- 2019. Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). https://www.techopedia.com/definition/27054/massively-multiplayer-online-game-mmog.Google Scholar
- 2019. Microsoft Azure. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/.Google Scholar
- 2019. Nvidia Cloud Gaming. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/rtx-server-gaming/.Google Scholar
- 2019. Nvidia GeForce MOW. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/games/#geforcenow/.Google Scholar
- 2019. PlayStation Now. https://www.playstation.com/en-us/explore/playstation-now/.Google Scholar
- Maryam Amiri, Hussein Al Osman, Shervin Shirmohammadi, and Maha Abdallah. 2016. Toward delay-efficient game-aware data centers for cloud gaming. ACM Trans. Multimed. Comput. Commun. Appl. 12, 5s, Article 71 (Sept. 2016), 19 pages. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2983639 Google Scholar
Digital Library
- O. Brun, C. Bockstal, and J. Garcia. 2006. A simple formula for end-to-end jitter estimation in packet-switching networks. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Networking, International Conference on Systems and International Conference on Mobile Communications and Learning Technologies (ICNICONSMCL’06). Google Scholar
Digital Library
- N. M. Calcavecchia, O. Biran, E. Hadad, and Y. Moatti. 2012. VM placement strategies for cloud scenarios. In Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE 5th International Conference on Cloud Computing. 852--859. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- De-Yu Chen and Magda El-Zarki. 2019. A framework for adaptive residual streaming for single-player cloud gaming. ACM Trans. Multimedia Comput. Commun. Appl. 15, 2s, Article 66 (July 2019), 23 pages. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3336498 Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Kuan-Ta Chen, Polly Huang, and Chin-Laung Lei. 2006. How sensitive are online gamers to network quality?Commun. ACM 49, 11 (Nov. 2006), 34--38. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/1167838.1167859 Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Y. Chen, J. Liu, and Y. Cui. 2016. Inter-player delay optimization in multiplayer cloud gaming. In Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE 9th International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD). 702--709.Google Scholar
- Sharon Choy, Bernard Wong, Gwendal Simon, and Catherine Rosenberg. 2012. The brewing storm in cloud gaming: A measurement study on cloud to end-user latency. In the 11th ACM Annual Workshop on Networkand Systems Support for Games (NetGames'12). Venise, Italy. https://doi.org/10.1109/NetGames.2012.640402 Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Sharon Choy, Bernard Wong, Gwendal Simon, and Catherine Rosenberg. 2014. A hybrid edge-cloud architecture for reducing on-demand gaming latency. Multimedia Syst. 20, 5 (2014), 503--519. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Mark Claypool and Kajal Claypool. 2006. Latency and player actions in online games. Commun. ACM 49, 11 (2006), 40--45. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Y. Deng, Y. Li, R. Seet, X. Tang, and W. Cai. 2018. The server allocation problem for session-based multiplayer cloud gaming. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia 20, 5 (2018), 1233--1245.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Yunhua Deng, Yusen Li, Xueyan Tang, and Wentong Cai. 2016. Server allocation for multiplayer cloud gaming. In Proceedings of the 24th ACM International Conference on Multimedia. ACM, 918--927. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- X. Li, J. Wu, S. Tang, and S. Lu. 2014. Let's stay together: Towards traffic aware virtual machine placement in datacenters. In IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM'14). 1842--1850.Google Scholar
- David Finkel, Mark Claypool, Sam Jaffe, Thinh Nguyen, and Brendan Stephen. 2014. Assignment of games to servers in the OnLive cloud game system. In Proceedings of the 13th Annual Workshop on Network and Systems Support for Games. IEEE Press, 4:1--4:3. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Y. Gao, L. Wang, and J. Zhou. 2019. Cost-efficient and quality of experience-aware provisioning of virtual machines for multiplayer cloud gaming in geographically distributed data centers. IEEE Access 7 (2019), 142574--142585.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Hua-Jun Hong, De-Yu Chen, Chun-Ying Huang, Kuan-Ta Chen, and Cheng-Hsin Hsu. 2015. Placing virtual machines to optimize cloud gaming experience. IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing 3, 1 (2015), 42--53.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Chun-Ying Huang, Kuan-Ta Chen, De-Yu Chen, Hwai-Jung Hsu, and Cheng-Hsin Hsu. 2014. GamingAnywhere: The first open source cloud gaming system. ACM Trans. Multimedia Comput. Commun. Appl. 10, 1s (2014), 10:1--10:25. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Michael Jarschel, Daniel Schlosser, Sven Scheuring, and Tobias Hoßfeld. 2013. Gaming in the clouds: QoE and the users’ perspective. Mathematical and Computer Modelling 57, 11--12 (2013), 2883--2894.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- M. Jarschel, D. Schlosser, S. Scheuring, and T. Hoßfeld. 2011. An evaluation of QoE in cloud gaming based on subjective tests. In Proceedings of the 2011 5th International Conference on Innovative Mobile and Internet Services in Ubiquitous Computing. 330--335. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Frederick W. B. Li, Rynson W. H. Lau, Danny Kilis, and Lewis W. F. Li. 2011. Game-on-demand: An online game engine based on geometry streaming. ACM Trans. Multimedia Comput. Commun. Appl. 7, 3, Article 19 (Sept. 2011), 22 pages. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2000486.2000493 Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Yusen Li, Yunhua Deng, Ronald Seet, Xueyan Tang, and Wentong Cai. 2015. MASTER: Multi-platform application streaming toolkits for elastic resources. In Proceedings of the 23rd ACM International Conference on Multimedia. ACM, 805--806. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Yusen Li, Yunhua Deng, Xueyan Tang, Wentong Cai, Xiaoguang Liu, and Gang Wang. 2018. Cost-efficient server provisioning for cloud gaming. ACM Trans. Multimedia Comput. Commun. Appl. 14, 3s, Article 55 (June 2018), 22 pages. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3190838 Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Yusen Li, Xueyan Tang, and Wentong Cai. 2015. Play request dispatching for efficient virtual machine usage in cloud gaming. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology 25, 12 (2015), 2052--2063.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Moreno Marzolla, Stefano Ferretti, and Gabriele D’Angelo. 2012. Dynamic resource provisioning for cloud-based gaming infrastructures. Comput. Entertain. 10, 1 (2012), 4:1--4:20. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- X. Meng, V. Pappas, and L. Zhang. 2010. Improving the scalability of data center networks with traffic-aware virtual machine placement. In Proceedings of the 2010 s IEEE INFOCOM. 1--9. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Melanie Mitchell. 1996. An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- E. Ross Philip. 2009. Cloud computing’s killer app: Gaming. IEEE Spectrum 46, 3 (2009), 14--14. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Zhengwei Qi, Jianguo Yao, Chao Zhang, Miao Yu, Zhizhou Yang, and Haibing Guan. 2014. VGRIS: Virtualized GPU resource isolation and scheduling in cloud gaming. ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization (TACO) 11, 2 (2014), 17. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- M. Ries, P. Svoboda, and M. Rupp. 2008. Empirical study of subjective quality for Massive Multiplayer Games. In Proceedings of the 2008 15th International Conference on Systems, Signals and Image Processing. 181--184.Google Scholar
- Javad Sadeghi, Saeid Sadeghi, and Seyed Taghi Akhavan Niaki. 2014. Optimizing a hybrid vendor-managed inventory and transportation problem with fuzzy demand: An improved particle swarm optimization algorithm. Information Sciences 272, C (2014), 126--144. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Jose Saldana and Mirko Suznjevic. 2015. QoE and Latency Issues in Networked Games. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-4560-52-8_23-1Google Scholar
- Ryan Shea, Di Fu, and Jiangchuan Liu. 2015. Rhizome: Utilizing the public cloud to provide 3D gaming infrastructure. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM Multimedia Systems Conference. ACM, 97--100. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Ryan Shea, Jiangchuan Liu, Edith Ngai, and Yong Cui. 2013. Cloud gaming: Architecture and performance. IEEE Network 27, 4 (2013), 16--21.Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Ivan Slivar, Mirko Suznjevic, and Lea Skorin-Kapov. 2018. Game categorization for deriving QoE-driven video encoding configuration strategies for cloud gaming. ACM Trans. Multimedia Comput. Commun. Appl. 14, 3s, Article 56 (June 2018), 24 pages. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3132041 Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Richard Süselbeck, Gregor Schiele, and Christian Becker. 2009. Peer-to-peer support for low-latency massively multiplayer online games in the cloud. In Proceedings of the 8th Annual Workshop on Network and Systems Support for Games. IEEE Press, 14:1--14:2. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- M. Suznjevic, L. Skorin-Kapov, and M. Matijasevic. 2013. The impact of user, system, and context factors on gaming QoE: A case study involving MMORPGs. In Proceedings of the 2013 12th Annual Workshop on Network and Systems Support for Games (NetGames). 1--6. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Hao Tian, Di Wu, Jian He, Yuedong Xu, and Min Chen. 2015. On achieving cost-effective adaptive cloud gaming in geo-distributed data centers. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology 25, 12 (2015), 2064--2077.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Jiyan Wu, Bo Cheng, Yuan Yang, Ming Wang, and Junliang Chen. 2017. Delay-aware quality optimization in cloud-assisted video streaming system. ACM Trans. Multimedia Comput. Commun. Appl. 14, 1, Article 4 (Dec. 2017), 25 pages. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3152116 Google Scholar
Digital Library
- X. Liao, L. Lin, G. Tan, H. Jin, X. Yang, W. Zhang, and B. Li. 2016. LiveRender: A cloud gaming system based on compressed graphics streaming. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking 24, 4 (2016), 2128--2139. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Yeng-Ting Lee, Kuan-Ta Chen, Yun-Maw Cheng, and Chin-Laung Lei. 2011. World of Warcraft Avatar History Dataset. ACM, 123--128. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Meiqi Zhao, Elvis Liu, and Jianmin Zheng. 2018. Region-based hosting strategies for cloud gaming platforms. In Proceedings of the Annual International Conference on Computer Games, Multimedia & Allied Technology. GSTF, 63--72.Google Scholar
- Zhou Zhao, Kai Hwang, and Jose Villeta. 2012. Game cloud design with virtualized CPU/GPU servers and initial performance results. In Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Scientific Cloud Computing. ACM, 23--30. Google Scholar
Digital Library
Index Terms
Server Allocation for Massively Multiplayer Online Cloud Games Using Evolutionary Optimization
Recommendations
Server Allocation for Multiplayer Cloud Gaming
MM '16: Proceedings of the 24th ACM international conference on MultimediaAdvances in cloud computing and GPU virtualization are allowing the game industry to move into a cloud gaming era. While shifting standalone video games to the cloud gaming mode is straightforward, adapting multiplayer online games to the cloud gaming ...
CAPTCHA Challenges for Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Mini-game CAPTCHAs
CW '10: Proceedings of the 2010 International Conference on CyberworldsBotting or automated programs in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) has long been a problem in these networked virtual environments. The use of bots gives cheating players an unfair advantage over other honest players. Using bots, players can ...
Practical Middleware for Massively Multiplayer Online Games
A massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) lets thousands of players interact simultaneously within a virtual world via the Internet. Middleware plays an important role in the development of next-generation MMOGs, which must be built on platforms that ...






Comments