Virtual Machine Placement Optimization in Mobile Cloud Gaming Through QoE-Oriented Resource Competition

Abstract

Cloud gaming is a novel service provisioning paradigm, which hosts video games in the cloud and transmits interactive game streams to game players via the Internet. In such cloud gaming scenarios, the cloud is required to consume tremendous resources for video rendering and streaming, especially when the number of concurrent players reaches a certain level. On the other hand, different game players may have distinct requirements on Quality-of-Experience, such as high video quality, low delay, etc. Under this circumstance, how to satisfy players of different interests by efficiently leveraging cloud resources becomes a major challenge to existing cloud gaming services. In order to meet the overall requirements of players in a cost-effective manner, this article applies game theory to cloud gaming scenarios. It proposes a distributed algorithm to optimize virtual machine (VM) placement in mobile cloud gaming through resource competition. Further, by constructing a potential function, we prove that the resource competition game is a potential game, and the proposed algorithm scales well as the player population increases. We prove theoretically and verify experimentally that, with the proposed distributed VM placement algorithm, players can achieve a mutually satisfying state within a finite number of iterations.