Nimesh Subramanian CMSC601

 Massively multiplayer online game (MMOG).  It is estimated that 55% of internet users play multiplayer online games.  The online gaming industry alone is valued at 7 billion USD.  The most famous example is World of Warcraft.

 Each game in the cloud has its own dedicated hardware, thus leading to overprovisioning of resources.  Even if the company has multiple games it will employ dedicated hardware for each of those games.  A common problem in the online gaming industry is the sharded design architecture that is currently being employed.  This sharded principle will worsen the over provisioning phenomenon  Another problem to be considered is Network latency must be low enough to have a decent gameplay experience.

 Using the Spatial-locality property of the player.  Using spatial locality property,three categories can be formed 1. Area of interest 2. Zone of interest 3. Realm of interest  Each of these will have a set of players associated with them.  P2P connections can be formed within each set.  Propagation of events can be based on priority.

 When a particular zone reaches a certain threshold value, we can split the zone further to maintain the Quality-of-Service (QoS).  If the zone is sparsely polulated, we can combine the zones.  Reducing the number of players in a zone reduces the number of events to be propagated.  Each zone can be hosted in a separate VM. When its time to combine or split the zones meta-data can be passed.

 Server consolidation- Bin-packing algorithm

 Internet connection: One of the main issue with cloud gaming. If connection becomes congested or there is a packet loss, frame rate will drop resulting in degradation of game play  Under perfomance Your system might be able to give better resolution than what your getting from the cloud servers

 Click and play  Constant Upgrades Improving a game console is impossible, and upgrading your PC is expensive and time consuming.  Reduces the investment needed.  Reduces the power consumption.

 Suselbeck, R. ; Schiele, G. ; Becker, C.,Peer-to-peer support for low-latency Massively Multiplayer Online Games in the cloud  Nae, V. ; Prodan, R. ; Fahringer, T.,"Cost- efficient hosting and load balancing of Massively Multiplayer Online Games“  Yeng-Ting Lee ; Kuan-Ta Chen, "Is Server Consolidation Benecial to MMORPG? A Case Study of World of Warcraft"