Efficient Development and Execution of Adaptable Online Games on Clouds

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) are a challenging class of applications: they combine high demands on real-time user interactivity and adaptability with the problem of an efficient and economic utilization of resources for the dynamically changing number of users. This chapter studies how MMOG can benefit from Cloud Computing with its Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) approach to cost-efficient leasing resources on demand. The chapter makes two major contributions: (1) a new lifecycle model for the development of adaptable MMOG expresses major design and execution aspects of Cloud-based MMOG, and (2) a resource management system RTF-RMS implements efficient load balancing for MMOG on Clouds. The authors illustrate how their lifecycle model and RTF-RMS system support the efficient development and execution of adaptable MMOG on Clouds and demonstrate the advantages of their approach in an experimental evaluation.