Integrating centralized and peer-to-peer architectures to support interest management in massively multiplayer on-line games

A fundamental problem for the development of peer-to-peer (P2P) distributed virtual environments, like massively multiplayer on-line games, is the definition of an overlay supporting interest management, that is, determining all the entities of the virtual world that are relevant for a given player. To this end, this paper proposes a gossip-based approach that considers the coverage of the area of interest of peers as the guiding principle for the definition of the P2P overlay and its maintenance. The resulting overlay provides a support for a best-effort resolution of interest management, mostly supported through communications on the P2P overlay, with minimal intervention of a centralized entity. The paper presents a set of extensive simulations based on realistic mobility traces. The experimental results show the effectiveness of gossiping for the construction and maintenance of a best-effort overlay for interest management. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.