Gascon-Samson J., Kemme, B., Kienzle, J. (2013) Lamoth: A Message Dissemination Middleware for MMOGs in the Cloud, NetGames 2013, Denver, USA
[Preprint] [Poster]

Abstract: Provisionning network resources for Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) poses interesting challenges due to the fact that the load can greatly vary depending on the time or other in-game factors. In this paper, we propose Lamoth, a cloud middleware for MMOGs that provides an interface for in-game message dissemination. Lamoth handles the exchange of game messages between nodes by making use of an arbitrary number of off-the-shelve pub/sub servers deployed in the cloud depending on the game scenario. In order to evaluate our platform, we implement Lamoth on top of Mammoth, McGill’s research-oriented MMOG, and conduct extensive experiments by triggering situations which would cause networks bottlenecks. Our evaluations show that Lamoth can allow a MMOG to scale to high numbers of players and can properly handle extremely-demanding in-game situations if enough resources are provided.