Load dynamics of a multiplayer online battle arena and simulative assessment of edge server placements

Burger, Valentin; Pajo, Jane Frances; Sanchez, Odnan Ref; Seufert, Michael; Schwartz, Christian; Wamser, Florian; Davoli, Franco; Tran-Gia, Phuoc

doi:10.1145/2910017.2910601

Cited by 8 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…We evaluate each approach independently, while maintaining identical secondary components such as game-solving algorithms and game logic. We focus on performance because we believe it is the most important performance metric, as also indicated in several related works [10,16,17,23,27,32,39,42].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiplayer Game Backends: A Comparison of Commodity Cloud-Based Approaches

Kasenides

Paspallis

2020

Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing

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The development of resource-intensive complex distributed systems such as the backend side of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) has shifted towards cloud-based approaches in recent years. Despite this shift, researchers and developers have mostly utilized proprietary clouds to provide services for such applications -thus leaving the area of commodity clouds largely unexplored. The use of proprietary clouds is almost always applied at the Infrastructure-as-a-Service layer, thereby enforcing restrictions on the development of MMOGs. In a previous work we focused on the characteristics of MMOGs, outlining certain factors that prohibit their deployment on commodity clouds. In this paper, we evaluate the suitability of common public cloud platforms in developing and deploying the backend side of MMOGs. In our approach, we implement a simple MMOG over three popular public cloud platforms. Then, we evaluate their performance by measuring the latency of the game over each platform as well as the maximum size of game worlds supported by each approach. Our measurements show that approaches based on the Infrastructure-as-a-Service layer perform better than those based on the Platform-as-a-Service layer -which was expected. However, our results indicate that MMOGs based on the Platform-as-a-Service layer can also perform relatively well and within the bounds of real-time latency. Coupled with accelerated development and lower maintenance costs, Platform-as-a-Service technology paves the way for further development of MMOG specific Backend-as-a-Service platforms.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiplayer Game Backends: A Comparison of Commodity Cloud-Based Approaches

Kasenides

Paspallis

2020

Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing

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“…Perhaps the most important performance indicator for an MMOG backend is the "global response delay", also known as "latency" [7,[15][16][17][18][19]. The latency, commonly measured in the order of milliseconds, is dependent on a variety of system parameters and configurations such as processor and memory capacity, network speed, distance, and so on.…”

Section: Performancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…These techniques limit the number of concurrent players to cope with the high resource demand. Despite increases in computing power in recent years, even Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBAs) [7] cannot support more than several hundred simultaneous players. In addition, hugely successful MMOGs with persistent worlds such as World of Warcraft have faced problems in managing such a high influx of players and had to break them down into more manageable units, with "each server [hosting] a community of about 20,000 players" [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Kasenides

Paspallis

2022

Software

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The development of resource-intensive, distributed, real-time applications like Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) backends entails a variety of challenges, some of which have been extensively studied. Despite some advancements, the development and deployment of MMOG backends on commodity clouds and high-level computing layers continues to face several obstacles, including a non-standardized development methodology, lack of provisions for scalability, and the need for abstractions and tools to support the development process. In this paper, we describe a set of models, methods, and tools for developing scalable MMOG backends and hosting them on commodity cloud platforms. We present Athlos, a framework that allows game developers to leverage our methodology to rapidly prototype MMOG backends that can run on any type of cloud environment. We evaluate this framework by conducting simulations based on several case-study MMOGs to benchmark its performance and scalability, and compare the development effort needed, and quality of the code produced with other approaches. We find that MMOGs developed using this framework: (a) can support a very high number of simultaneous players under a given latency threshold, (b) elastically scale both in terms of runtime and state, and (c) significantly reduce the amount of effort required to develop them. Coupled with the advantages of high-level computing layers such as Platform, Backend, and Function-as-a-Service, we argue that our framework accelerates the development of high-performance, scalable MMOGs, that leverage the resources of commodity cloud platforms.

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“…Within the medium of online gaming, there is a strong continuing trend of Free-to-Play models, of which many different online games have millions of subscribers and hundreds of thousands of concurrent players [15,26,16]. Due to the nature of how many of these games fragment their players for individual game sessions, a popular model discussed is the concept of a hybrid peer-to-peer (P2P) network architecture.…”

Section: Existing Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Machine Learning Prediction of Gamer’s Private Networks (GPN®S)

Mazur

Ayers

Humphrey

et al. 2020

Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing

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The Gamer's Private Network (GPN ®) is a client/server technology created by WTFast for making the network performance of online games faster and more reliable. GPN ® s use middle-mile servers and proprietary algorithms to better connect online video-game players to their game's servers across a wide-area network. Online games are a massive entertainment market and network latency is a key aspect of a player's competitive edge. This market means many different approaches to network architecture are implemented by different competing companies and that those architectures are constantly evolving. Ensuring the optimal connection between a client of WTFast and the online game they wish to play is thus an incredibly difficult problem to automate. Using machine learning, we analyzed historical network data from GPN ® connections to explore the feasibility of network latency prediction which is a key part of optimization. Our next step will be to collect live data (including client/server load, packet and port information and specific game state information) from GPN ® Minecraft servers and bots. We will use this information in a Reinforcement Learning model along with predictions about latency to alter the clients' and servers' configurations for optimal network performance. These investigations and experiments will improve quality of service and reliability for GPN ® systems.

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Load dynamics of a multiplayer online battle arena and simulative assessment of edge server placements

Cited by 8 publications

References 21 publications

Multiplayer Game Backends: A Comparison of Commodity Cloud-Based Approaches

Multiplayer Game Backends: A Comparison of Commodity Cloud-Based Approaches

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

Machine Learning Prediction of Gamer’s Private Networks (GPN®S)

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