Games Are Not Equal: Classifying Cloud Gaming Contexts for Effective User Experience Measurement

Abstract

To tap into the growing market of cloud gaming, whereby game graphics is rendered in the cloud and streamed back to the user as a video feed, network operators are creating monetizable assurance services that dynamically provision network resources. However, without accurately measuring cloud gaming user experience, they cannot assess the effectiveness of their provisioning methods. Basic measures such as bandwidth and frame rate by themselves do not suffice, and can only be interpreted in the context of the game played and the player activity within the game. This paper equips the network operator with a method to obtain a real-time measure of cloud gaming experience by analyzing network traffic, including contextual factors such as the game title and player activity stage. Our method is able to classify the game title within the first five seconds of game launch, and continuously assess the player activity stage as being active, passive, or idle. We deploy it in an ISP hosting NVIDIA cloud gaming servers for the region. We provide insights from hundreds of thousands of cloud game streaming sessions over a three-month period into the dependence of bandwidth consumption and experience level on the gameplay contexts.