Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
skip to main content
research-article

Facilitating Serverless Match-based Online Games with Novel Blockchain Technologies

Published: 23 February 2023 Publication History

Abstract

Applying peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture to online video games has already attracted both academic and industrial interests, since it removes the need for expensive server maintenance. However, there are two major issues preventing the use of a P2P architecture, namely how to provide an effective distributed data storage solution, and how to tackle potential cheating behaviors. Inspired by emerging blockchain techniques, we propose a novel consensus model called Proof-of-Play (PoP) to provide a decentralized data storage system that incorporates an anti-cheating mechanism for P2P games, by rewarding players that interact with the game as intended, along with consideration of security measures to address the Nothing-at-stake Problem and the Long-range Attack. To validate our design, we utilize a game-theory model to show that under certain assumptions, the integrity of the PoP system would not be undermined due to the best interests of any user. Then, as a proof-of-concept, we developed a P2P game (Infinity Battle) to demonstrate how a game can be integrated with PoP in practice. Finally, experiments were conducted to study PoP in comparison with Proof-of-Work (PoW) to show its advantages in various aspects.

References

[1]
Sharad Agarwal and Jacob R. Lorch. 2009. Matchmaking for online games and other latency-sensitive P2P systems. In ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, Vol. 39. ACM, 315–326.
[2]
Adam Back et al. 2002. Hashcash-a denial of service counter-measure. (2002).
[3]
Ignasi Barri, Concepció Roig, and Francesc Giné. 2016. Distributing game instances in a hybrid client-server/P2P system to support MMORPG playability. Multimedia Tools and Applications 75, 4 (2016), 2005–2029.
[4]
Ashwin Bharambe, John R. Douceur, Jacob R. Lorch, Thomas Moscibroda, Jeffrey Pang, Srinivasan Seshan, and Xinyu Zhuang. 2008. Donnybrook: Enabling large-scale, high-speed, peer-to-peer games. SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev. 38, 4 (Aug.2008), 389–400.
[5]
Michał Boroń, Jerzy Brzeziński, and Anna Kobusińska. 2020. P2P matchmaking solution for online games. Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications 13, 1 (2020), 137–150.
[6]
Jonah Brown-Cohen, Arvind Narayanan, Alexandros Psomas, and S. Matthew Weinberg. 2019. Formal barriers to longest-chain proof-of-stake protocols. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Economics and Computation. 459–473.
[7]
Vitalik Buterin et al. 2014. Ethereum White Paper: A Next Generation Smart Contract & Decentralized Application Platform. First version (2014).
[8]
Vitalik Buterin and Virgil Griffith. 2017. Casper the friendly finality gadget. arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.09437 (2017).
[9]
Wei Cai, Zehua Wang, Jason B. Ernst, Zhen Hong, Chen Feng, and Victor C. M. Leung. 2018. Decentralized applications: The blockchain-empowered software system. IEEE Access 6 (2018), 53019–53033.
[10]
Wei Cai and Xiao Wu. 2019. Demo abstract: An interoperable avatar framework across multiple games and blockchains. In IEEE INFOCOM 2019-IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS). IEEE, 967–968.
[11]
Colin F. Camerer. 2011. Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction. Princeton University Press.
[12]
E. Deirmentzoglou, G. Papakyriakopoulos, and C. Patsakis. 2019. A survey on long-range attacks for proof of stake protocols. IEEE Access 7 (2019), 28712–28725.
[13]
Alan Demers, Dan Greene, Carl Hauser, Wes Irish, John Larson, Scott Shenker, Howard Sturgis, Dan Swinehart, and Doug Terry. 1987. Epidemic algorithms for replicated database maintenance. In Proceedings of the Sixth Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing. 1–12.
[14]
Jesse Donkervliet, Animesh Trivedi, and Alexandru Iosup. 2020. Towards supporting millions of users in modifiable virtual environments by redesigning minecraft-like games as serverless systems. In 12th \(\lbrace\) USENIX \(\rbrace\) Workshop on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing (HotCloud 20).
[15]
Ali Dorri, Salil S. Kanhere, Raja Jurdak, and Praveen Gauravaram. 2019. LSB: A lightweight scalable blockchain for IoT security and anonymity. J. Parallel and Distrib. Comput. 134 (2019), 180–197.
[16]
John R. Douceur. 2002. The Sybil attack. In Peer-to-Peer Systems, Peter Druschel, Frans Kaashoek, and Antony Rowstron (Eds.). Springer Berlin, Berlin, 251–260.
[17]
Scott Douglas, Egemen Tanin, Aaron Harwood, and Shanika Karunasekera. 2005. Enabling massively multi-player online gaming applications on a P2P architecture. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Information and Automation. 7–12.
[18]
Haihan Duan, Jiaye Li, Sizheng Fan, Zhonghao Lin, Xiao Wu, and Wei Cai. 2021. Metaverse for social good: A university campus prototype. In Proceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Multimedia. 153–161.
[19]
Stefan Dziembowski, Sebastian Faust, Vladimir Kolmogorov, and Krzysztof Pietrzak. 2015. Proofs of space. In Annual Cryptology Conference. Springer, 585–605.
[20]
David Easley, Jon Kleinberg, et al. 2012. Networks, crowds, and markets: Reasoning about a highly connected world. Significance 9 (2012), 43–44.
[21]
Lu Fan, Hamish Taylor, and Phil Trinder. 2007. Mediator: A design framework for P2P MMOGs. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Network and System Support for Games. 43–48.
[22]
Lu Fan, Phil Trinder, and Hamish Taylor. 2010. Design issues for peer-to-peer massively multiplayer online games. International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication 4, 2 (2010), 108–125.
[23]
Geoffrey Fox. 2001. Peer-to-peer networks. Computing in Science & Engineering 3, 3 (2001), 75–77.
[24]
John S. Gilmore and Herman A. Engelbrecht. 2011. A survey of state persistency in peer-to-peer massively multiplayer online games. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems 23, 5 (2011), 818–834.
[25]
Seyoung Huh, Sangrae Cho, and Soohyung Kim. 2017. Managing IoT devices using blockchain platform. In 2017 19th International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology (ICACT). IEEE, 464–467.
[26]
EOS IO. 2018. EOS. IO Technical White Paper v2. EOS, Tech. Rep., March (2018).
[27]
Patric Kabus and Alejandro P. Buchmann. 2007. Design of a cheat-resistant P2P online gaming system. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts. ACM, 113–120.
[28]
Sukrit Kalra, Rishabh Sanghi, and Mohan Dhawan. 2018. Blockchain-based real-time cheat prevention and robustness for multi-player online games. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Emerging Networking Experiments and Technologies. 178–190.
[29]
Kostis Karantias, Aggelos Kiayias, and Dionysis Zindros. 2020. Proof-of-burn. In International Conference on Financial Cryptography and Data Security. Springer, 523–540.
[30]
Sunny King and Scott Nadal. 2012. PPCoin: Peer-to-peer crypto-currency with proof-of-stake. self-published paper, August 19 (2012).
[31]
Markus Klems, Jacob Eberhardt, Stefan Tai, Steffen Härtlein, Simon Buchholz, and Ahmed Tidjani. 2017. Trustless intermediation in blockchain-based decentralized service marketplaces. In International Conference on Service-Oriented Computing. Springer, 731–739.
[32]
B. Knutsson, Honghui Lu, Wei Xu, and B. Hopkins. 2004. Peer-to-peer support for massively multiplayer games. In IEEE INFOCOM 2004, Vol. 1. 107.
[33]
Daniel Kraft. 2016. Game channels for trustless off-chain interactions in decentralized virtual worlds. Ledger 1, 0 (2016), 84–98.
[34]
Gregory Levitin et al. 2005. The Universal Generating Function in Reliability Analysis and Optimization. Vol. 6. Springer.
[35]
Xiaoqi Li, Peng Jiang, Ting Chen, Xiapu Luo, and Qiaoyan Wen. 2020. A survey on the security of blockchain systems. Future Generation Computer Systems 107 (2020), 841–853.
[36]
Iuon-Chang Lin and Tzu-Chun Liao. 2017. A survey of blockchain security issues and challenges. IJ Network Security 19, 5 (2017), 653–659.
[37]
Huey-Ing Liu and Yun-Ting Lo. 2008. DaCAP-a distributed Anti-Cheating peer to peer architecture for massive multiplayer on-line role playing game. In 2008 Eighth IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGRID). IEEE, 584–589.
[38]
Mitar Milutinovic, Warren He, Howard Wu, and Maxinder Kanwal. 2016. Proof of luck: An efficient blockchain consensus protocol. In Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on System Software for Trusted Execution. 1–6.
[39]
Tian Min and Wei Cai. 2019. A security case study for blockchain games. In 2019 IEEE Games, Entertainment, Media Conference (GEM). IEEE, 1–8.
[40]
Tian Min, Hanyi Wang, Yaoze Guo, and Wei Cai. 2019. Blockchain games: A survey. arXiv preprint arXiv:1906.05558 (2019).
[41]
Satoshi Nakamoto et al. 2008. Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. (2008).
[42]
John F. Nash et al. 1950. Equilibrium points in n-person games. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 36, 1 (1950), 48–49.
[43]
Jonathan Newton. 2018. Evolutionary game theory: A renaissance. Games 9, 2 (2018), 31.
[44]
Giang-Truong Nguyen and Kyungbaek Kim. 2018. A survey about consensus algorithms used in blockchain. Journal of Information Processing Systems 14, 1 (2018).
[45]
Oscar Novo. 2018. Blockchain meets IoT: An architecture for scalable access management in IoT. IEEE Internet of Things Journal 5, 2 (2018), 1184–1195.
[46]
Md. Mehedi Hassan Onik and Mahdi H. Miraz. 2019. Performance analytical comparison of blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) platforms. In International Conference for Emerging Technologies in Computing. Springer, 3–18.
[47]
Martin J. Osborne et al. 2004. An Introduction to Game Theory. Vol. 3. Oxford University Press New York.
[48]
Andrew Paradise and Dennis Zografos. 2016. Integrations portal for a peer-to-peer game platform. US Patent 9,349,246.
[49]
Sunoo Park, Krzysztof Pietrzak, Joël Alwen, Georg Fuchsbauer, and Peter Gazi. 2015. SpaceCoin: A Cryptocurrency Based on Proofs of Space (Vol. 528). Technical Report. IACR Cryptology ePrint Archive. https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/528.pdf.
[50]
Jared N. Plumb and Ryan Stutsman. 2018. Exploiting Google’s edge network for massively multiplayer online games. In 2018 IEEE 2nd International Conference on Fog and Edge Computing (ICFEC). IEEE, 1–8.
[51]
Gokay Saldamli, Charit Upadhyay, Devika Jadhav, Rohit Shrishrimal, Bapugouda Patil, and Lo’ai Tawalbeh. 2022. Improved gossip protocol for blockchain applications. Cluster Computing (2022), 1–12.
[52]
Mayra Samaniego, Uurtsaikh Jamsrandorj, and Ralph Deters. 2016. Blockchain as a service for IoT. In 2016 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData). IEEE, 433–436.
[53]
R. Schollmeier. 2001. A definition of peer-to-peer networking for the classification of peer-to-peer architectures and applications. In Proceedings First International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing. 101–102.
[54]
Eric Setton, Jeonghun Noh, and Bernd Girod. 2006. Low latency video streaming over peer-to-peer networks. In 2006 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo. IEEE, 569–572.
[55]
Sushil Kumar Singh, Shailendra Rathore, and Jong Hyuk Park. 2020. BlockIoTIntelligence: A blockchain-enabled intelligent IoT architecture with artificial intelligence. Future Generation Computer Systems 110 (2020), 721–743.
[56]
Student. 1908. The probable error of a mean. Biometrika (1908), 1–25.
[57]
Daniel Stutzbach and Reza Rejaie. 2006. Understanding churn in peer-to-peer networks. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCOMM Conference on Internet Measurement. 189–202.
[58]
BUFF Team. 2018. BUFF: Game for fun, earn for real. (2018).
[59]
Michael J. Toutonghi, Michael F. Toutonghi, and Alex R. English. 2018. Verus Coin. (2018).
[60]
Karl Tuyls and Ann Nowé. 2005. Evolutionary game theory and multi-agent reinforcement learning. The Knowledge Engineering Review 20, 1 (2005), 63–90.
[61]
Tengfei Wang, Shuyi Zhang, Xiao Wu, and Wei Cai. 2019. Rhythm Dungeon: A blockchain-based music roguelike game. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. 1–3.
[62]
Yao Wang and Julita Vassileva. 2003. Trust and reputation model in peer-to-peer networks. In Proceedings Third International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing (P2P2003). IEEE, 150–157.
[63]
Steven Daniel Webb, Sieteng Soh, and Jerry L. Trahan. 2009. Secure referee selection for fair and responsive peer-to-peer gaming. Simulation 85, 9 (2009), 608–618.
[64]
Nxt Wiki. 2019. Whitepaper:Nxt — Nxt Wiki,. https://nxtwiki.org/index.php?title=Whitepaper:Nxt&oldid=53653. [Online; accessed 21-September-2019].
[65]
Bin Wu. 2019. Hierarchical macro strategy model for MOBA game AI. In Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 33. 1206–1213.
[66]
Feijie Wu, Ho Yin Yuen, Henry C. B. Chan, Victor C. M. Leung, and Wei Cai. 2020. Infinity Battle: A glance at how blockchain techniques serve in a serverless gaming system. In Proceedings of the 28th ACM International Conference on Multimedia (Seattle, WA, USA) (MM’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 4559–4561.
[67]
Amir Yahyavi and Bettina Kemme. 2013. Peer-to-peer architectures for massively multiplayer online games: A survey. ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 46, 1 (2013), 9.
[68]
Deheng Ye, Guibin Chen, Wen Zhang, Sheng Chen, Bo Yuan, Bo Liu, Jia Chen, Zhao Liu, Fuhao Qiu, Hongsheng Yu, et al. 2020. Towards playing full MOBA games with deep reinforcement learning. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 33 (2020), 621–632.
[69]
Deheng Ye, Guibin Chen, Peilin Zhao, Fuhao Qiu, Bo Yuan, Wen Zhang, Sheng Chen, Mingfei Sun, Xiaoqian Li, Siqin Li, et al. 2020. Supervised learning achieves human-level performance in MOBA games: A case study of Honor of Kings. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems (2020).
[70]
Ho Yin Yuen, Feijie Wu, Wei Cai, Henry C. B. Chan, Qiao Yan, and Victor C. M. Leung. 2019. Proof-of-play: A novel consensus model for blockchain-based peer-to-peer gaming system. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM International Symposium on Blockchain and Secure Critical Infrastructure. 19–28.
[71]
Nairan Zhang, Youngki Lee, Meera Radhakrishnan, and Rajesh Krishna Balan. 2015. GameOn: P2P gaming on public transport. In Proceedings of the 13th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services. 105–119.
[72]
Wenbing Zhao, Shunkun Yang, and Xiong Luo. 2019. On consensus in public blockchains. In Proceedings of the 2019 International Conference on Blockchain Technology. 1–5.
[73]
Zibin Zheng, Shaoan Xie, Hong-Ning Dai, Xiangping Chen, and Huaimin Wang. 2018. Blockchain challenges and opportunities: A survey. International Journal of Web and Grid Services 14, 4 (2018), 352–375.

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)GBT-CHAIN: A System Framework for Solving the General Trilemma in Permissioned BlockchainsDistributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice10.1145/36158713:2(1-15)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Cross-CBAM: a lightweight network for real-time scene segmentationJournal of Real-Time Image Processing10.1007/s11554-024-01414-y21:2Online publication date: 24-Feb-2024
  • (2024)Challenger: Blockchain-based Massively Multiplayer Online Game ArchitectureNetworked Systems10.1007/978-3-031-67321-4_3(50-66)Online publication date: 29-May-2024
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Internet Technology
ACM Transactions on Internet Technology  Volume 23, Issue 1
February 2023
564 pages
ISSN:1533-5399
EISSN:1557-6051
DOI:10.1145/3584863
  • Editor:
  • Ling Liu
Issue’s Table of Contents

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 23 February 2023
Online AM: 07 October 2022
Accepted: 29 August 2022
Revised: 17 May 2022
Received: 24 June 2021
Published in TOIT Volume 23, Issue 1

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. Peer-to-peer game
  2. blockchain
  3. consensus model

Qualifiers

  • Research-article

Funding Sources

  • Shenzhen Science and Technology Program
  • Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society
  • Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
  • Guangdong Pearl River Talent Recruitment Program
  • Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Commission

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)194
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)24
Reflects downloads up to 17 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)GBT-CHAIN: A System Framework for Solving the General Trilemma in Permissioned BlockchainsDistributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice10.1145/36158713:2(1-15)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2024
  • (2024)Cross-CBAM: a lightweight network for real-time scene segmentationJournal of Real-Time Image Processing10.1007/s11554-024-01414-y21:2Online publication date: 24-Feb-2024
  • (2024)Challenger: Blockchain-based Massively Multiplayer Online Game ArchitectureNetworked Systems10.1007/978-3-031-67321-4_3(50-66)Online publication date: 29-May-2024
  • (2023)The Meta-FusionInternational Journal of Cloud Applications and Computing10.4018/IJCAC.33175213:1(1-24)Online publication date: 9-Oct-2023
  • (2023)Guest Editorial Special Issue on Social Studies, Human Factors, and Applications in MetaverseIEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems10.1109/TCSS.2023.331319910:5(2160-2164)Online publication date: Oct-2023
  • (2023)A novel model for Sybil attack detection in online social network using optimal three-stream double attention networkThe Journal of Supercomputing10.1007/s11227-023-05677-380:6(7433-7482)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2023

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Full Access

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

Full Text

View this article in Full Text.

Full Text

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

HTML Format

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media