Modeling and Characterizing User Experience in a Cloud Server Based Mobile Gaming Approach

With the evolution of mobile devices and networks, and the growing trend of mobile Internet access, rich, multi-player gaming using mobile devices, similar to PC-based Internet games, has tremendous potential and interest. However, the current client-server architecture for PC-based Internet games, where most of the storage and computational burden of the game lies with the client device, does not work with mobile devices, constraining mobile gaming to either downloadable, single player games, or very light non-interactive versions of the rich multi-player Internet games. In this paper, we study a cloud server based approach, termed Cloud Mobile Gaming (CMG), where the burden of executing the gaming engines is put on cloud servers, and the mobile devices just communicate the users´ gaming commands to the servers. We analyze the factors affecting the quality of user experience using the CMG approach, including the game genres, video encoding factors, and the conditions of the wireless network. Based on the above analysis, we develop a model for Mobile Gaming User Experience (MGUE), and develop a prototype for real-time measurement of MGUE that can be used in real networks. We validate MGUE model using controlled subjective testing, and then use it to characterize user experience achievable using the CMG approach in wireless networks.