JSSPP '02 Revised Papers from the 8th International Workshop on Job Scheduling Strategies for Parallel Processing
The Contract Net Protocol: High-Level Communication and Control in a Distributed Problem Solver
IEEE Transactions on Computers
Robust resource allocation in a massive multiplayer online gaming environment
Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Foundations of Digital Games
Geelix LiveGames: remote playing of video games
CCNC'09 Proceedings of the 6th IEEE Conference on Consumer Communications and Networking Conference
Is Server Consolidation Beneficial to MMORPG? A Case Study of World of Warcraft
CLOUD '10 Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE 3rd International Conference on Cloud Computing
International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication
Euro-Par'09 Proceedings of the 2009 international conference on Parallel processing
Dynamic Resource Provisioning in Massively Multiplayer Online Games
IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
A new business model for massively multiplayer online games
Proceedings of the 2nd ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance engineering
Performance Analysis of Cloud Computing Services for Many-Tasks Scientific Computing
IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
Autonomic operation of massively multiplayer online games in clouds
Proceedings of the 2013 ACM Cloud and Autonomic Computing Conference
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To sustain the variable load of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) with guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS), game operators over-provision a static infrastructure capable of sustaining the peak load, even though a large portion of the resources is unused most of the time. This inefficient way of provisioning resources has negative impacts, leading to inefficient resource utilisation, high service prices, and limited market participation accessible only to the large companies. We propose a new ecosystem and model for hosting and operating MMOGs based on cloud computing principles involving four smaller and better focused business actors whose interaction is regulated through Service Level Agreements (SLAs): resource provider, game operator, game provider, and client. In our model, game providers lease operation SLAs from the game operators to satisfy all client requests and manage multiple distributed MMOG sessions. In turn, game operators efficiently lease on-demand cloud resources based on the dynamic MMOG load and ensure proper game operation that maintains QoS to all clients. In this paper, we focus on the business interaction between the game provider and the game operator by defining the SLA terms and the underlying negotiation protocol, including a model for compensations for QoS violations. We propose a method for ranking operational offers based on price, compensation and resource fitness, and study its impact on game provider's profit in an environment with several providers competing for SLAs from multiple game operators.