A Service Platform for On-Line Games

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A Service Platform for On-Line Games

• DebanJan Saha, Dambit Sahu, Anees Shaikh
• (IBM TJ Watson Research Center, NY)
• Presented by Gary Huang
• March 17, 2004

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Outline

• Motivation
• Introduction
• Gaming Service Platform Architecture
• Middleware Services
• Leveraging the Grid
• Conclusion

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1. Motivation

• Problem
• - Deploying a large, dedicated server
  infrastructure to support a single game title is
  an expensive approach.
• - The approach does not make the best use of
  available resources.
• Proposal
• - A shared, on-demand service platform for
  hosting on- line games based on grid technology.
• - A standards-based grid infrastructure provides
  economies of scale and high availability.

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2. Introduction

• FPS and MMORPG Games
• Grid Technology
• Middleware

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2.1 FPS and MMORPG Games

• FPS
• (First-person shooters)
• MMORPG
• (Massively multiplayer on-line role-playing
  games)

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2.1.1 FPS

• FPS games stress both server and network
  infrastructure due to strict interactivity
  requirements.
• FPS game server can support a fairly small number
  of players (no more than a few tens).

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2.1.2 MMORPG

• MMORPG games do not have as strict interactivity
  requirements as FPS games.
• A single server can support hundreds of players
  at a time.

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2.1.3 Disadvantages and Expectations

• Disadvantages of FPS and MMORPG games
• - require a significant amount of computing and
  networking resources.
• - are hosted on individual servers with
  virtually no global management.
• These result in a fragmented gaming community
  with no guarantees on server or network
  performance and often lead to poor game-playing
  experiences.
• Expectations for server platform
• - Intelligently allocate computing resources
• - Optimize server utilization while maximizing
  game playing satisfaction.

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2.2 Grid Technology

• Grid infrastructure
• - is geared initially toward FPS games.
• - several of the gaming services are applied to
  MMORPG games as well.
• Advantages
• - Grid technology provides a standards-based
  platform suited for an on-demand computing
  infrastructure.
• - Grid-based shared infrastructure provides
  economies of scale, industrial scale resiliency,
  and necessary prerequisites for a successful
  on-line gaming industry.

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2.3 Middleware

• One of objectives is
• - to develop middleware based on existing grid
  components that will facilitate an on-line games
  hosting platform.
• The middleware targets the following services
• - Player Service
• - Game Publisher Service
• - System Service

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3. Gaming Service Platform Architecture
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• Gaming Grid
• - consists of a number of server clusters
  located in geographically distributed data
  centers.
• Data Centers
• - are connected to the Internet via one or more
  ISPs.
• The federation of server clusters is a resource
• - shared across a number of game publishers.
• - used to host different games.
• The allocation of server resources may change
  over time as the number and distribution of
  players change.

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4. Middleware Services

• The purpose of MS
• - To hide the complexity of managing the grid
  infrastructure from publishers and players.
• Three Types of Services
• - Player Service
• - Game Publisher Service
• - System Service

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4.1 Player Services

• Four Functionalities
• - Managing account information
• - Authenticating the player
• - Providing game related announcements
• - Finding an appropriate game server.
• Hide the details of the underlying architecture,
  including games hosted on a grid infrastructure.

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4.2 Game Publisher Services

• Five Functionalities
• - Deploying a game
• - Automatically updating game software
• - Monitoring game server performance
• - Managing service level agreements
• - Handling various modes of billing and
  settlement
• The automatic software update service should
  scale to a large number of servers.
• The game publisher middleware also allows a game
  publisher to specify an SLA for its players.

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4.3 System Services

• Provide
• - on-demand server resource management
• - directory services for player and game
  discovery
• - resource-specific performance
• - availability monitoring.
• The objective of resource management
• - To maximize the revenue of the grid
  infrastructure provider while meeting the
  objectives of the game publishers and players.

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5. Leveraging the Grid

• Current Grid Standards
• Applying Grid Middleware

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5.1 Current Grid Standards

• Computational grids are currently built around
  several different models.
• For the gaming service grid, the service provider
  (or grid provider) follows a dedicated resource
  model.
• To support the model, a number of vendors have
  released software to construct the grid.
• One such package is the Globus Toolkit
• - An open source software project which
  provides a number of component services in the
  areas of resource management, information
  services, and data management.
• - Version 2 of the Globus Toolkit is currently
  considered the standard grid implementation.

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5.2 Applying Grid Middleware

• Existing grid middleware can be leveraged to
  realize key functions of the gaming service
  architecture.
• Four components of the Globus Toolkit 2.2.
• - Resource management
• - Information services
• - Data management
• - Security

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6. Conclusion

• Developed a grid-based hosting infrastructure for
  on-line games, which is suited for server
  intensive FPS games and MMORPG games.
• The grid infrastructure provides economies of
  scale and high availability.
• In order to make the best use of the grid
  infrastructure for gaming, a set of software
  services based the Globus Toolkit is developed.
• The gaming middleware provides player management,
  publisher management, and system management
  services designed to facilitate hosting of
  on-line games in a grid environment.