Are We Ready to Play in the Cloud? Developing new Quality Certifications to Tackle Challenges of Cloud Gaming Services

Abstract

Cloud services have already become an elementary part of our everyday lives. Nowadays even computer games are executed on powerful cloud servers. These cloud gaming services have many benefits for users, yet they have to fulfil high quality requirements to satisfy users' needs because even minimal performance losses are directly observable and worsen the gaming experience. Traditionally, cloud service providers undergo certifications to increase transparency and address users' quality concerns. However, existing certifications are not applicable in the context of cloud gaming to prove a high service quality, and it remains unclear which requirements a cloud gaming service has to fulfil. We conduct a thorough literature review to identify requirements for cloud gaming services as well as extensively review existing cloud service certifications. At the same time, we pay special attention to the interdependencies between the individual stages of the cloud service provisioning chain. With our study, we advance the understanding of cloud gaming services by providing a synthesis and discussion of requirements that providers need to fulfil to ensure user satisfaction. We guide future research as well as practitioners towards a new generation of cloud service certification for cloud gaming services.