Towards cloudlet-based mobile cloud gaming

Massively Multiplayer Online Cloud Game (MMOCG) is a combination of cloud gaming and Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG). Running MMOGs on the cloud can reduce the cost for the players, attract potential players, and meet the nowadays preference of mobile devices. However, the MMOCGs introduce new challenges that need to be addressed. MMOGs usually consume more computational resources because of their sophisticated graphics. Hosting MMOCGs can be more expensive for game operators than hosting other genres of games on the cloud. In order to earn a decent profit, the cost of hosting MMOCGs must be reduced to an acceptable cost. Moreover, MMOCG introduce extra cloud servers to MMOG, which increased the burden of network transmission. So, the MMOCGs must have a good quality of service (QoS) and quality of experience (QoE) to retain the players. In this thesis, we study the server allocation problem to improve MMOCGs in many aspects, including money cost, QoS, and QoE. We proposed three different server allocation strategies to address the challenges of MMOCGs in different situations. We first consider the MMOCG system with several cloud gaming platforms that lie in different locations in the world, each can provide a type of server that can host MMOG on them. The cloud gaming system only obtains the information necessary for gaming. With only the log-in information, a server allocation problem is defined to reduce the money cost of hosting MMOCGs and provide an acceptable network latency for the players. The problem is formulated into an optimization problem that aims to minimize the weighted combination of server rental cost, data transfer cost, and network latency. A genetic algorithm is developed to solve the minimization problem. Extensive experiments are conducted to evaluate the proposed method and compare it with the state-of-the-art as well. The experimental results show that the method gives a lower money cost and a shorter network latency most of the time. We then consider the MMOCG system that can collect the past logging in and out data of the players. We proposed a server allocation problem that aims to reduce the cost of cloud server rental and improve the QoE of the system. A genetic algorithm with gaming time prediction is proposed to solve the problem. The gaming time of the players logging into the system is predicted by the model trained by a neural network. We conduct experiments to evaluate our method and the proposed gaming time prediction model. The results show that our prediction model can achieve almost highly accurate prediction and the server allocation strategy we proposed outperforms the prior art in both server rental and QoE. At last, we consider the influence of QoE on the movement of players during gaming time and propose a server allocation problem aiming to improve the QoE of players during gaming time. We propose a genetic algorithm with trace prediction to address this problem. A trace prediction that predicts the future positions of players for a few time steps when they log into the MMOCG system. Experiments are conducted to evaluate our method by measuring the network latency, mean opinion score, and the time consuming computation. The results show that our method outperforms the genetic algorithm without trace prediction in over 50% of the cases.

With the proliferation of smart mobile devices and broadband wireless networks, the mobile gaming market is rapidly expanding among younger generations due to its ubiquitous entertainment features. Cloud-based mobile computing is a promising technology to address the inherent restrictions of mobile devices, such as limited battery lifetime and computational capacity. In this work, we categorize the current approaches to cloud-based mobile gaming and explicitly define Mobile Cloud Gaming (MCG). Based on its unique features, we propose a framework for next generation MCG systems. Open research issues for MCG are also discussed.

With the evolution of mobile devices and networks, and the growing trend of mobile Internet access, rich multi-player gaming using mobile devices, similar to PC-based Internet games, has tremendous potential and interest. However, the current client-server architecture for PC-based Internet games, where most of the storage and computational burden of the game lies with the client device, does not work with mobile devices, constraining mobile gaming to either downloadable, single player games, or very light non-interactive versions of the rich multi-player Internet games. In this article, we study a cloud server based mobile gaming approach, termed Cloud Mobile Gaming (CMG), where the burden of executing the gaming engine is put on cloud servers, and the mobile devices just communicate the users' gaming commands to the servers. We analyze the factors affecting the Quality of user Experience (QoE) using the CMG approach, including the game genres, video settings, the conditions of server and client, and the conditions of the wireless network. A Mobile Gaming User Experience (MGUE) model is developed and validated through controlled subjective testing. We also develop a prototype for in-service measuring MGUE, and then use it to characterize user experience achievable using the CMG approach in a mobile cellular network. The MGUE model developed and validated in this article will be helpful for researchers and service providers to develop and assess the performance of future cloud mobile gaming techniques and services.

A short value chain, strong brand, strong game concept, broad porting, strong language support (EFIGS, i.e., English, French, Italian, German and Spanish), combined with short time to market and powerful global distribution machinery, are key components in building a successful mobile game and gaming business. But which of these components and factors affect success when success is defined as high revenue per download and high download volumes of the game? Or does the combination of all these factors decide the outcome? These are two central research questions in this study. We specifically describe the effects of using a brand in the mobile games' value chain. The comparative analysis of three J2ME-branded racing games points to the fact that the brand has a significant impact on the value chain and the success of a game. The stronger the brand the shorter the value chain, and the higher the revenue per download and the download volume. To some extent, a strong brand compensates for a lack in game quality, and even game porting. The other way around, we find that if the brand is weak even a good-quality game and very broad porting cannot compensate for the negative impact of a weak brand.

Examines the future for cloud gaming services. These services have leveraged real-time video streaming technologies that have a long history of development. Cloud gaming refers to the technologies that offload parts of game software from traditional game consoles or personal computers (PCs) to powerful and elastic cloud infrastructures. Cloud gaming makes perfect sense to: 1) gamers, who otherwise have to constantly upgrade their consoles or PCs, which is certainly no fun and costly; 2) cloud service providers, who can sell the already-deployed and idling cloud resources to support the cutting-edge games that are extremely resource hungry; and 3) game developers, who no longer need to spend months to port their games to different platforms. As such, cloud gaming has attracted significant attention from both academia and industry.

Realistic graphics and smooth experience in computer games come with the cost of increased computational requirements on the end-user devices. Emerging Cloud Gaming that enables executing the games on thin devices comes with its disadvantages such as susceptibility to network latency and the incurred cloud computing cost for the game service provider. The monolithic architecture of the game engines also presents an issue for cloud gaming where scaling efficiency in the cloud turns out to be limited. This paper proposes using edge computing principles to offload a subset of the local computations executed by games to a nearby edge server typically assigned for gaming applications. Specifically, we focus on physics computations since depending on the number of objects and their interactions modes this part may have considerable computational cost. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach we developed an edge gaming framework called Edge Physics Simulation (EPS) using the open-source game engine Bevy and the Rapier physics engine. We come up with an experiment setup in which a game scene with a high number of objects is executed using both standard local computation approach and using the proposed EPS method. In the experiments up to 8000 objects of varying shape complexities are employed to trigger significant computational load due to the collision detection process. Assessment metrics used are average physics computation time, resource consumption of local device and, the breakdown of the physics duration into its critical components such network time, simulation time and compression time. Our results show that EPS significantly reduces physics time compared to local execution. For the highest number of objects 75% reduction in physics computation time is reported where breakdown of physics time is further analyzed.

As VR technology continues to advance as an emerging technology, an increasing number of enterprises are recognizing the extensive development and application prospects of VR technology. This article provides a summary of the development history and principles of VR technology. This paper thoroughly examines the utilization of VR technology in the gaming industry, analyzing the advantages, current status, and challenges associated with VR technology in this field. VR games offer the unique advantage of providing an immersive experience, allowing players to enter a virtual world distinct from reality. However, VR games still face the challenge of immature hardware technology and high costs. Cloud games and mobile games are encroaching on the development space of VR games. As hardware costs and research and development expenses decrease, the expectations and demands of game players continue to rise. As a result, VR games will have a broad application market in the future due to their unique immersive experience.

Cloud computing is the transformation of information and communication technology from client or server-based computers. Cloud computing technology benefits users no longer need to invest heavily in software or maintenance software applications. So by developing the Cloud, there is a Cloud gaming which is a process to install a remote interactive game in the cloud and issued in the form of video to the user's device via the internet. In this journal, we need a cloud gaming application called Skyegrid. This study aims to implement cloud-based mobile gaming cloud implementation using an open-source server (Skyegrid) to find out Resources, Service Quality and Experience Quality in this study. In this study Skyegrid is used to discuss some popular games, namely games called Rainbow Six Siege and Monster Hunter World. The result of this study is that Skyegrid's cloud gaming mobile system is able to implement PC games that can be run on Android smartphones and reduce the use of CPU and RAM resources, and use low cost using skyegrid cloud gaming using personal computers that require greater costs.

Recent developments in mobile, cloud, and graphics processing technologies have enabled mobile cloud gaming, a gaming model where players use mobile devices to play graphics-intensive games that run remotely on cloud servers. This delivery paradigm is called Gaming as a Service GaaS. GaaS is used to stream computer games across the Internet. It gives rise to various technical, legal, and ethical issues. In this paper, we present the current state of the art in GaaS along with open issues and research challenges.

Mobile cloud gaming (MCG), which is potential to deliver high-quality gaming experience to users anywhere and anytime, suffers from tremendous wide-area traffic and long network delays. Mobile edge computing (MEC), where cloud computing capabilities are pushed to the network edge, can help by providing gaming services in the proximity to users. However, since the quality of experience (QoE), i.e., the gaming experience, is easily impaired by long network delays and low frame rates, the performance of MEC-enabled MCG highly depends on the placement of gaming services and the allocation of related bandwidth. Furthermore, due to the erratic mobility of users, migrating services to follow such mobility decreases the impairment but incurs extra system cost, leading to the performance-cost tradeoff. To address these challenges, in this paper, we jointly investigate service placement and bandwidth allocation for MEC-enabled MCG. Considering the system dynamics, we propose to minimize the QoE impairment in a long time scope under a cost constraint for long-term migrations. To solve the problem, we develop an online two-layer iterative algorithm OnTrial. Rigorous theoretical analyses demonstrate that OnTrial achieves a near-optimal performance and bounds the potential violation of the migration cost constraint. Simulation results show that OnTrial outperforms other algorithms by at least 25% on the long-term QoE impairment.

Cloud gaming is an ideal solution to provide the desired GPU rendering for the Virtual Reality (VR) gaming while reducing the requirements for the weight, price, and capabilities of the head-mounted display. However, transmitting the high-resolution video requires a large amount of network bandwidth. In this paper, we present a cloud VR gaming system that significantly improves the coding efficiency by using a proposed Object-Aware Video Encoding (OAVE). Different from the video service, the game engine can offer information about the objects in the game scene. By combining this information and the eye-tracking data, the encoder compressed the rendered video in an object-dependent way that sets the quantization parameter according to the object of the user's gaze. Through the subjective experiment conducted on the prototype of the system, above 40% to 47% bandwidth saving can be achieved compared with the conventional VR gaming system without the proposed optimization.

Youth online engagement and well-being are especially important in emerging countries, but they tend to be understudied. Rather, the existing research tends to be more on the United States. This study examined third place theory of virtual spaces on individual-level well-being among the Generation Z from Brazil and China, especially comparing them to their U.S. counterparts. Well-being, both related to realizing your full potential and lowering psychopathology, is relevant to youth engagement in online spaces, because the spaces can help the youth express their true selves and engage in supportive online communities. The participants were players of a mobile video game whose three months of pre-survey gameplay data and survey data (N = 986) were analyzed. We compared countries on several third place characteristics, on well-being, and how the third place characteristics predicted well-being. We found that players from the three countries were significantly different in several third place characteristics (i.e., neutral ground, leveler, and conversation). Well-being was also higher among the Chinese players. Moreover, the leveler characteristic–commonality of game levels among players and their in-game friends–significantly predicted well-being. These findings from a mobile game help better understand youth online perceptions and behaviors in different countries, correlates to well-being, and contribute to the theory development of virtual third places and digital public spheres.

With the increasing popularity of Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) and fast growth of mobile gaming, cloud gaming exhibits great promises over the conventional MMOG gaming model as it frees players from the requirement of hardware and game installation on their local computers. However, as the graphics rendering is offloaded to the cloud, the data transmission between the end-users and the cloud significantly increases the response latency and limits the user coverage, thus preventing cloud gaming to achieve high user Quality of Experience (QoE). To solve this problem, previous research suggested deploying more data centers, but it comes at a prohibitive cost. We propose a lightweight system called Cloud Fog, which incorporates "fog" consisting of super nodes that are responsible for rendering game videos and streaming them to their nearby players. Fog enables the cloud to be only responsible for the intensive game state computation and sending update information to super nodes, which significantly reduce the traffic hence the latency and bandwidth consumption. Experimental results from PeerSim and Planet Lab show the effectiveness and efficiency of Cloud Fog in increasing user coverage, reducing response latency and bandwidth consumption.

In this paper, we propose on-device voice command assistants for mobile games to increase user experiences even in hands-busy situations such as driving and cooking. Since most of the current mobile games cost large memory (e.g. more than 1GB memory), so it is necessary to reduce memory usage further to integrate voice commands systems on mobile clients. Therefore a need to design an on-device automatic speech recognition system that costs minimal memory and CPU resources rises. To this end, we apply cross layer parameter sharing to Conformer, named MONICA2 which results in lower memory usage for on-device speech recognition. MONICA2 reduces the number of parameters of deep neural network by 58%, with minimal recognition accuracy degradation measured in word error rate on Librispeech benchmark. As an on-device voice command user interface, MONICA2 costs only 12.8MB mobile memory and the average inference time for 3-seconds voice command is about 30ms, which is profiled in Samsung Galaxy S9. As far as we know, MONICA2 is the most memory efficient yet accurate on-device speech recognition which could be applied to various applications such as mobile games, IoT devices, etc.

Nowadays, smartphones have become the largest gaming platform. With the improvement of the performance of smartphones continuously, the manipulation of mobile games has gradually turned to more horizontal and complicated. It also prompted players to pay more attention to the gaming experience; even emerge dedicated joystick for mobile phones. However, the previous literature has rarely discussed the gaming experience and the feelings of the mobile game control process. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the feelings of play mobile games with different joysticks and to find the key Kansei vocabulary that affects players’ feelings stronger, to establish the design direction of joysticks which are dedicated to the mobile phone in the future. This research will invite high-involved players of mobile games to conduct Focus group and play mobile games. Through the research results, we can understand the players’ expected feelings when playing mobile games, and also provide the future design direction of the joystick, so that players have a better gaming experience, even increase willingness to play mobile games, and make a positive impact on the gaming market. In addition, through this study, we will be able to explore the process of using the Kansei engineering method to understand the users’ expected control feelings and apply to the development of future human-computer interactive products and contribute to the field of human-computer interaction.