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
Outline
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Motivation
Introduction
Gaming Service Platform Architecture
Middleware Services
Leveraging the Grid
Conclusion
1. Motivation
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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.
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Proposal:
A shared, on-demand service platform for hosting online games based on grid technology.
A standards-based grid infrastructure provides
economies of scale and high availability.
2. Introduction
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FPS and MMORPG Games
Grid Technology
Middleware
2.1 FPS and MMORPG Games
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FPS
(First-person shooters)
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MMORPG
(Massively multiplayer on-line role-playing games)
2.1.1 FPS
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FPS games stress both server and network infrastructure
due to strict interactivity requirements.
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FPS game server can support a fairly small number of
players (no more than a few tens).
2.1.2 MMORPG
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MMORPG games do not have as strict interactivity
requirements as FPS games.
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A single server can support hundreds of players at a time.
2.1.3 Disadvantages and Expectations
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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.
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These result in a fragmented gaming community with no
guarantees on server or network performance and often
lead to poor game-playing experiences.
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Expectations for server platform:
Intelligently allocate computing resources
Optimize server utilization while maximizing game
playing satisfaction.
2.2 Grid Technology
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Grid infrastructure:
is geared initially toward FPS games.
several of the gaming services are applied to
MMORPG games as well.
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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.
2.3 Middleware
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One of objectives is:
to develop middleware based on existing grid
components that will facilitate an on-line games
hosting platform.
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The middleware targets the following services:
Player Service
Game Publisher Service
System Service
3. Gaming Service Platform Architecture
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Gaming Grid:
consists of a number of server clusters located in
geographically distributed data centers.
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Data Centers
are connected to the Internet via one or more ISPs.
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The federation of server clusters is a resource:
shared across a number of game publishers.
used to host different games.
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The allocation of server resources may change over time as
the number and distribution of players change.
4. Middleware Services
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The purpose of MS:
To hide the complexity of managing the grid
infrastructure from publishers and players.
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Three Types of Services:
Player Service
Game Publisher Service
System Service
4.1 Player Services
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Four Functionalities:
Managing account information
Authenticating the player
Providing game related announcements
Finding an appropriate game server.
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Hide the details of the underlying architecture, including
games hosted on a grid infrastructure.
4.2 Game Publisher Services
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Five Functionalities:
Deploying a game
Automatically updating game software
Monitoring game server performance
Managing service level agreements
Handling various modes of billing and settlement
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The automatic software update service should scale to a
large number of servers.
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The game publisher middleware also allows a game
publisher to specify an SLA for its players.
4.3 System Services
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Provide:
on-demand server resource management
directory services for player and game discovery
resource-specific performance
availability monitoring.
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The objective of resource management:
To maximize the revenue of the grid infrastructure
provider while meeting the objectives of the game
publishers and players.
5. Leveraging the Grid
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Current Grid Standards
Applying Grid Middleware
5.1 Current Grid Standards
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Computational grids are currently built around several different
models.
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For the gaming service grid, the service provider (or grid provider)
follows a dedicated resource model.
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To support the model, a number of vendors have released software to
construct the grid.
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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.
5.2 Applying Grid Middleware
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Existing grid middleware can be leveraged to realize key
functions of the gaming service architecture.
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Four components of the Globus Toolkit 2.2.
Resource management
Information services
Data management
Security
6. Conclusion
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Developed a grid-based hosting infrastructure for on-line
games, which is suited for server intensive FPS games and
MMORPG games.
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The grid infrastructure provides economies of scale and
high availability.
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In order to make the best use of the grid infrastructure for
gaming, a set of software services based the Globus
Toolkit is developed.
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The gaming middleware provides player management,
publisher management, and system management services
designed to facilitate hosting of on-line games in a grid
environment.