Untitled - Universidade de Lisboa

Cloud Computing to Support the Evolution of
Massive Multiplayer Online Games
Dario Maggiorini, Laura Anna Ripamonti
University of Milano, via Comelico 39,
I-20135 Milano, Italy
{dario.maggiorini, laura.ripamonti}@unimi.it
Abstract. In these recent years, with the gain in popularity of online games, we are witnessing a
progressive increment in the number of massive multiplayer online games available over the
Internet. Given the scalability requirements imposed by a huge population of users over an
extended length of time, game providers face the major challenge of long-term IT infrastructures
dimensioning. In particular, the risks are over-allocation (wasting resource and money) or nontimely
upgrades (loosing subscribers and revenues.) In this paper we advocate Cloud Computing
as a viable solution to dynamically allocate resource for a massive game service infrastructure in
order to satisfy users' needs while minimizing maintenance costs. To this extent we envision a
mid-term future where game provisioning will be performed by means of a three-tier architecture:
the users, the game provider, and the cloud provider. We believe that many medium/small game
providers may benefit from the on-demand resources allocation infrastructure offered by the cloud,
due to shorter deployment time and reduced total cost of ownership.
Keywords: Cloud computing, Massive Multiplayer Online Games, Scalability.
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