Distributing game instances in a hybrid client-server/P2P system to support MMORPG playability

Abstract

MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) is the most popular genre among network gamers, and now attract millions of users, who play simultaneously in an evolving virtual world. This huge number of concurrent players requires the availability of high performance computation servers. Additionally, gaming aware distribution mechanisms are needed to distribute game instances among servers to avoid load imbalances that affect performance negatively. In this work, we tackle the problem of game distribution and scalability by means of a hybrid Client-Server/P2P architecture that can scale dynamically according to the demand. To manage peak loads that occur during the game, we distribute game computation across the system according to the behavior of MMORPGs. We distinguish between the computation associated with the Main Game, that affects all players, and the computation of Auxiliary Games that affects only a few players and acts in isolation from the execution of the Main Game. Taking this distinction into account, we propose a mechanism that is focused in the distribution of Auxiliary Games, as an entity, across the pool of servers and peers of the underlying hybrid architecture. We evaluate the performance of the balancing mechanism taking the criteria of latency and reliability into account, and we compare the effectiveness of the mechanism with a classic approach that applies load balancing to individually players in a Client-Server system. We show that the balancing mechanism based on the latency criteria provides lower latency Appl (2016Appl ( ) 75:2005Appl ( -2029 than the classical proposal, while in relation to reliability, we obtain a failure probability of under 0.9 % in the worst case, which is amply compensated by the scalability provided by the use of the P2P area.

A Systematic Mapping Study of MMOG Backend Architectures

“…Another study proposes to improve the dedicated infrastructure approach by utilizing a dedicated cluster of servers which enables their MMORPG services to overcome scalability issues [18]. The authors identify scalability and availability limitations as the main problems of the dedicated infrastructure approach.…”

“…Using the first method-spatial partitioning-the game world is divided into regions which are then distributed to the peers with the most resourceful peer entering that area becoming the manager of it. For example, the authors of Reference [18] propose a hybrid system which includes a central server and a pool of peers. In this system, the central server hosts the MMOG and distributes the game to other peers once it reaches its full resource capacity.…”

“…Successful deployment of any MMOG requires an "ultralow-delay cost-efficient design" [18]. Thus, Barri et al [18] investigate how the costs can be minimized while satisfying the QoE requirement for players. They present a resource allocation framework for cloud infrastructure that benefits from virtualized resources.…”

Athlos: A Framework for Developing Scalable MMOG Backends on Commodity Clouds

“…To achieve this, they must be able to handle these resource-demanding tasks quickly and thus offer low-latency gameplay [9]. While achieving such high performance relies on having access to raw computing power, MMOGs must also employ a "cost-efficient design" [10]. This highlights the need to have high-performance, cost-efficient, and adaptive development methods and tools that can enable MMOG backends to achieve a high level of QoE.…”

Routing and Network Coding Over a Cyclic Network for Online Video Gaming

“…T O improve the performance of emerging real-time groupbased multiuser applications, e.g., multiplayer online games, Internet-of-Things or mobile group services, a distributed 2-tier architecture has been largely proposed [1]- [3]. In such an architecture, user instances are distributed among multiple servers in order to meet the delay constraint imposed by the real-time service requirement.…”