Middleware for high performance electronic games on network

Abstract

Electronic games sell millions of copies world wide. To take advantage of these potential consumers, transforming a medium such as the videogame into a space for advertising is something simple, but there are two limiting factors: geographical locality and the time zone of the adverts. This project proposes a framework which, in addition to allowing developers to create network games almost as though they were stand-alone, also delivers the functionalities which the company calls “game-commerce”: a virtual community which revolves around the movement of credits through the sale of games items or personalities and through the showing of adverts. Game-commerce solves the geographical and time location problems of commercials in games. The idea is to use the servers which manage competitions and handle the sale of items and personalities to exhibit the adverts also. The objectives of the project are: 1) To research a peer architecture for distributed entertainment systems (multiplayer games); 2) To study the technical viability of using the architecture with the hardware and network resources available on the market; 3) To create a methodology for the distribution of adverts in online games; 4) To implement a draft version of the framework; and 5) To create a game prototype to test the implemented functionalities. (AU)