A gaming system authenticates over a network a user of a remote device for a gaming system for a gambling game. The gaming system determines a location of the remote device. The gaming system verifies that the location of the remote device is within a jurisdiction that allows use of the gaming system by persons of age to gamble. Then the gaming system provides software to the remote device, wherein the software, when executed, causes media associated with the gambling game to be presented on the remote device.

System and method for connecting gaming devices to a network for remote play

To support hundreds of thousands of players in massively multiplayer online games, a distributed client-server architecture is widely used in which multiple servers are deployed and each server handles a partition of the virtual world. Because of the unpredictable movements and interactions of avatars, the concentration of avatars in some regions of the virtual world may cause some servers be overloaded. Existing load balancing schemes for distributed virtual environments and multiplayer games try to balance the workload among servers by transferring some workload of an overloaded server to other servers. While load balancing algorithms can minimize the average response time of the system, they may also result in frequent client migrations, which may damage the interactivity of an online game. In this paper, we propose a dynamic load sharing algorithm together with an efficient client migration scheme based on the concept of subscription regions. Simulation study has also been done to verify the effectiveness of our scheme.

A dynamic load sharing algorithm for massively multiplayer online games

A client player performs a query to a nameserver against a network map of Internet traffic conditions. The query is made asking for a particular service (e.g., RTSP) via a particular protocol (TCP) in a particular domain. In response, the nameserver returns a set of one or more tokens, with each token defining a machine or, in the preferred embodiment, a group of machines, from which the player should seek to obtain the stream. The player may then optionally perform one or more tests to determine which of a set of servers provides a best quality of service for the stream. That server is then used to retrieve the stream. Periodically, the client player code repeats the query during stream playback to determine whether there is a better source for the stream. If a better source exists, the player performs a switch to the better stream source “on the fly” if appropriate to maintain and/or enhance the quality of service. Preferably, the client player publishes data identifying why it selected a particular server, and such data may be used to augment the network map used for subsequent request routing determinations.

Client-side method for identifying an optimum server

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) are a class of computationally-intensive client-server applications with severe real-time Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, such as the number of updates per second each client needs to receive from the servers for a fluent and realistic experience. To guarantee the QoS requirements, game providers over-provision to game sessions a large amount of their resources, which is very inefficient and prohibits any but the largest providers from joining the market. In this paper, we present a new approach for cost-efficient hosting of MMOG sessions on Cloud resources, provisioned on-demand in the correct amount based on the current number of connected players. Simulation results on real MMOG traces demonstrate that compute Clouds can reduce the hosting costs by a factor between two and five. The resource allocation is driven by a load balancing algorithm that appropriately distributes the load such that the QoS requirements are fulfilled at all times. Experimental results on a fast-paced game demonstrator executed on resources owned by a specialised hosting company demonstrate that our algorithm is able to adjust the number of game servers and load distribution to the highly dynamic client load, while maintaining the QoS in 99.34% of the monitored events.

Cost-efficient hosting and load balancing of Massively Multiplayer Online Games

Software on a server accesses a batch file including a plurality of events generated by a remote game client application executing an instance of the computer-implemented game The software accesses a game state data object associated with the instance of the computer-implemented game The game state data object includes one or more game state parameters formatted as a serialized unstructured string of text data The software parses the game state data object to identify the one or more game state parameters The software processes the plurality of events in the batch file against game logic to update one or more of the game state parameters in the game state data object The game logic incorporates information extracted from a social graph And the software stores the game state data object in a memory cache

System and Method for Remote Updates

Network game servers, in which a huge number of users can play a common game through interconnecting network, can be designed in a distributed system architecture with the benefit of scalability, reliability, and cost effectiveness. In order to develop an efficient and scalable network game server system, the paper investigates the issue of load balancing for dynamic change of workload in a network game. We propose a dynamic load balancing algorithm for network games which takes into account the geographical relationship among game units and the short response time of frequent user interactions. We also present simulation results of the proposed algorithm.

Byungseok Park

Papers

A load balancing algorithm for a distributed multimedia game server architecture