Online gaming is a market that is growing exponentially, and it’s getting pretty big today. Massively Multiplayer Online Games are also a growing portion of this.
Right now, for most if not all multiplayer games, there has to be a server host. This host becomes responsible for managing all the aspects of the game in real time, relaying information received by players to each other. This can become very bandwidth and processor intensive, and thus limits the number of consecutive players. Thus, it does not usually scale very well.
MMOGs, usually being run by a corporation able to finance it, may use multiple servers that interact with each other to distribute the load and bandwidth of the environment. This helps, but still costs a great deal of money and is technically wasting bandwidth.
What if instead the players’ systems directly communicated with each other in a decentralized way to coordinate gameplay? Here I propose various techniques that could be used.
First, peers would connect to each other based on their virtual position in an environment. Thus, two peers standing next to each other would transfer data between each other. As players move about, they communicate with their neighboring players and connect to new players that are closer to them, dropping connections to players far away from them. Based on needs and line of sight concerns, players only get and receive information regarding other players as needed.
Environments could be provided by one or more groups, or a global environment could be made completely by the players. Either way, bandwidth is used more efficiently, reducing the cost to players and environment providers.
This technology would also enable virtual environments to scale better, and increase quality of gameplay to players.
Within the next year or two, you will see more activity in the intersection between Decentralization and Gaming.