VENI – Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Near Zero-Cost and Near-Infinite Capability 1 Massively Multiplayer Online Games Near-Zero Cost and Near-Infinite Capability Dr. Alexandru Iosup

VENI – Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Near Zero-Cost and Near-Infinite Capability 2 Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) are a Popular, Growing Market 25,000,000 people now, 60,000,000 by 2012 Over 150 commercial MMOGs in operation Market size $7,500,000,000/year

VENI – Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Near Zero-Cost and Near-Infinite Capability 3 What is an MMOG? 1.Content Graphics, maps, puzzles, quests + 2.Virtual world simulation Explore, do, learn, socialize, compete Myth vs. Reality - Avg player 30 years-old - 50% explore/socialize Romeo and Juliet

VENI – Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Near Zero-Cost and Near-Infinite Capability 4 Research Objective: Near-Zero Cost and Near-Infinite Capability for MMOGs The Content Problem Generating content on time for millions of players - Player-customized: balanced, diverse - Reduce upfront costs The Platform Problem Support millions of players inside a seamless world - Arbitrary workload variability - Latency sensitivity - Reduce upfront costs

VENI – Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Near Zero-Cost and Near-Infinite Capability 5 Today’s Technology The Content Problem - Human content designers - Upfront payment - Updates are rare - Not player-customized The Platform Problem - Large, dedicated multi-server infrastructures (1,000s servers, 100s locations: World of Warcraft, Runescape) - Upfront costs high, maintenance consumes ~40% revenue - Spare capacity

VENI – Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Near Zero-Cost and Near-Infinite Capability 6 The Content Problem - Auto content generation - Economy of scale - Frequent updates - Player customization The Platform Problem - Users (peers) provide service, super-peers provide guaranteed service - Cloud (on-demand, paid, guaranteed) resources for excess load - Low upfront costs, efficient and scalable capacity Our Vision: Content and Simulation, Together

VENI – Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Near Zero-Cost and Near-Infinite Capability 7 Research Plan and Impact Research Questions 1.How to generate interesting MMOG content in a scalable and efficient way? 2.What are the effective platforms for MMOGs, for the different classes of amateur and professional developers? 3.How to create a realistic model of the MMOG workloads? + MMOG Workloads Archive Scientific prototype Real open-source games such as BZFlag, FreeCiv, and NetHack (1,000,000+ users) Primarily SMEs and creative individuals Primarily large companies with multi-million player communities Who will benefit? Large companies and MMOG scientists; other sciences The independent developers

VENI – Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Near Zero-Cost and Near-Infinite Capability 8 Attainability and Creating Momentum Past grid and P2P research - Leading EU and national projects - Bibliometrics: 20+ articles, h-index 10, g 17, 300+ citations - 2 research awards, 1 nomination Past commercial game R&D - 3 award-winning commercial games - Co-PI Microsoft grant – teaching - 3 articles on games since Sep research award on games (2009) Industry UbiSoft (#4 game dev world) Khaeon (#1 Dutch MMOG dev) TNO, NL Microsoft NVIDIA Why do I qualify? With whom I will collaborate? Academia VU Amsterdam, NL Leiden University, NL U. Wisconsin-Madison, USA U. Innsbruck, AT Politehnica U. of Bucharest, RO Portland State U., USA Fits NWO RISCC and EU FP7 themes.

VENI – Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Near Zero-Cost and Near-Infinite Capability 9 MMOGs: Near zero-cost and Near-Infinite Capability Current technology What is the gain? Near-zero cost Near-infinite capability Better player experience Achieving true MMOG scale and economic potential Million-users, multi-bn. market Simulation and content MMOGs Upfront payment Cost and scalability problems Our approach Consider simulation and content together Platform problem: clouds and peer-to-peer systems Content problem: automation Why this applicant? Three research questions Understands risks Unique applicant background Collaboration network

VENI – Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Near Zero-Cost and Near-Infinite Capability 10 Why the Industry CANNOT do This? (Why is This Research-Worthy?) 1.We will design a general MMOG workload model vs. a company studies only the game it operates 2.We will create an open-access MMOG workloads archive, for a diverse community 3.We will compare new scalable computing architectures for MMOGs vs. “whatever works” 4.We will open a new research area: content generation at large scale and on time

VENI – Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Near Zero-Cost and Near-Infinite Capability 11 Mitigating Risks for Content Generation Main Risk How to generate interesting MMOG content? Map Puzzle Quest Mitigation plan Quantify “interesting” Play-test (prototype) Example: the Lunar Lockout puzzle

VENI – Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Near Zero-Cost and Near-Infinite Capability 12 MMOG Workloads Archive Motivation “Unfortunately, I am not able to release any of the data. Sony still considers it proprietary, and we can't control that.” – Sony “releases” EverQuest data “Unfortunately, CCP won't allow me to make their data publicly available for EVE Online.” – CCP “releases” EVE Online data Main goal Easy to share MMOG workload traces and research associated with them vs. The Grid Workloads Archive New application, new unified format Adapt tools

VENI – Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Near Zero-Cost and Near-Infinite Capability 13 MMOG Workloads Archive Applications Biology Disease spread models Social Sciences The emergence and performance of ad hoc groups in contemporary society Emergent behavior in complex systems Psychology Games as coping mechanism (minorities) Games as cure (agoraphobia) Economy Contemporary economic behavior

VENI – Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Near Zero-Cost and Near-Infinite Capability 14 Collaboration UbiSoft, Horia Pintilie, Programming Studio Technical Director Microsoft, Christos Gkantsidis, Researcher Khaeon, Erik ‘t Sas, CEO