We conduct real experiments to quantify user satisfaction in mobile cloud games using a real cloud gaming system built on the open-sourced GamingAnywhere. We share our experiences in porting GamingAnywhere client to Android OS and perform extensive experiments on both the mobile and desktop clients. The experiment results reveal several new insights: (1) gamers are more satisfied with the graphics quality on mobile devices, while they are more satisfied with the control quality on desktops, (2) the bitrate, frame rate, and network delay significantly affect the graphics and smoothness quality, and (3) the control quality only depends on the client type (mobile versus desktop). To the best of our knowledge, such user studies have never been done in the literature.
Citation preview
1. Quantifying User Satisfaction in Mobile Cloud Games
Chun-Ying Huang, Cheng-Hsin Hsu, De-Yu Chen, and Kuan-Ta Chen ACM
MoVid 2014, Singapore 1
2. Mobile Games Mobile games are hot! in 2011, 59% smartphone
users played mobile games [1] by 2016, mobile game market will grow
to 16 billion USD [2] Mobile games are less visually appealing,
because of the limitations on CPU/GPU power memory space/speed
network bandwidth battery capacity Possible solution: mobile cloud
gaming 2 [1] http://www.infosolutionsgroup.com/popcapmobile2012.pdf
[2]
https://www.abiresearch.com/research/product/1006313-mobile-gaming
3. What is Mobile Cloud Gaming 3 Real-time game playing using
light-weight mobile clients
4. Cloud Games on Mobile Devices Mobile cloud gaming has many
benefits better visual quality attract serious gamers lower porting
effort/cost more games lower battery consumption longer play time
But, most cloud games are played on PCs and TV set- top boxes steep
development cost most SDKs [CloudCom13, NOSSDAV13, MM11] are
proprietary high bars on gamer satisfaction high-quality + low
latency We address these two challenges in this work 4
5. GamingAnywhere: An Open Source Project We, researchers, have
tons of ideas to improve cloud gaming services, but all cloud
gaming systems are proprietary and closed GamingAnywhere is the
first cloud gaming platform for researchers, developers, and gamer
5
8. Our Two Contributions First, we optimize GamingAnywhere
client on Android device the first transparent cloud gaming
platform researchers, developers, and gamers may run any PC games
using our client Second, we conduct extensive user studies various
GamingAnywhere configurations with diverse resolutions, frame
rates, bitrates, and network delays are applied to desktops and
mobile devices many new insights 8 Cloud Server Mobile Client
Networks
9. Porting Client to Android Challenges short system delay:
wireless networks incur longer latency efficient implementation:
limited computation power and battery life user-friendly
controller: no physical inputs (buttons and joysticks) and small
screen size Solution approaches enable hardware A/V decoders faster
decoding and lower energy consumption realize proof-of-concept
controllers as overlays the best controller design is out-of-scope
9
10. Mobile Client Architecture Implemented by leveraging
open-source packages Support S/W and H/W decoders 10 Built-in H/W
Decoders S/W Decoders
11. Controllers Implement three proof-of-concept controllers,
designed for Nintendo 64 Nintendo DS Limbo 11 Nintendo 64
Controller Limbo Controller
12. User Interface Setting profiles and start games 12
13. Demo 13
14. Testbed for User Studies 14 GamingAnywhere ServerLAN
GamingAnywhere Desktop Client WiFi APGamingAnywhere Mobile Client
To understand how device type, game genre, resolution, bitrate,
frame rate, and network delay affect user experiences
15. Experiment Settings Limbo, Mario Kart, Super Mario, Super
Smash Bros 10 male and 5 female subjects between 21-34 years old
Configurations (each subject try all 68 configurations) Resolution:
640x480, 960x720, 1280x960 Bitrate: 1, 3, 5 Mbps Frame rate: 5, 20,
50 fps Network delay: 0, 150, 300 ms MOS score (1-5) on Graphics
Smoothness Control 15
16. Mobile versus PC 16 PCs have many physical keys The
implementations are efficient Really? Mobile is better?
17. Why Mobile Performs Better in Graphics? First, subjects may
have lower expectation on graphics of mobile devices Second,
smaller screen sizes make graphics imperfection less noticeable
Observation: The satisfaction levels are based on observed flaws
than absolute quality! 17
18. Impacts of Different Game Genres Subjects are more
sensitive to graphics quality in Limbo than in Mario Kart Mario
Kart is a fast-paced racing game, while Limbo is rather static
Subjects are less sensitive to controls in platform games (Limbo
and Super Mario) than in fighting (Super Smash Bros.) and racing
(Mario Kart) games Gamers face AI opponents in fighting and racing
games Gamers have enough time to prepare in platform games 18
19. Different Configurations Graphics quality is affected by
bitrate (dominating) and frame rate (weaker) Resolution has no
impact on graphics quality (surprising) We suspect: (1) games are
not too complex and (2) mobile client always up-scales the video
Through analysis is our future task Smoothness is affected by
network delay, frame rate, and bitrate We suspect low graphics
quality leads to low MOS score, more analysis is our future work
Control is only affected by client type (PC versus mobile) 19
20. Conclusion We presented the optimized Android Gaming-
Anywhere client We conducted extensive mobile cloud gaming user
studies, which reveal three main insights 1. Gamers are more
satisfied with the graphics quality on mobile devices 2. The
bitrate, frame rate, and network delay affect the graphics and
smoothness quality the most 3. The control quality is only affected
by client type (PC versus mobile) 20
21. QUESTIONS? Join us at http://gaminganwhere.org 21
