Satisfying the Hunger for Mobile Online Games: Providing Quality Time in Vehicular Scenarios

While interactive online games are often thought of as an entertainment experience that can exclusively occur at home through one of the mainstream consoles or a high-end PC, more and more players now normally enjoy playing them on the move, directly from smartphones. One barrier, however, still prevents players from enjoying a fully mobile experience, as cellular network technologies do not appear capable, today, of supporting the high interactivity that the streams of some game genres (e.g., First Person Shooters) require. In fact, such issue leads many players to opt for WiFi connectivity, trading better coverage for improved connectivity quality. However, also WiFi links may result frustrating, as the connectivity time available with an AP, while moving, might not be sufficient to complete any given step of a game. Clearly, such problem becomes particularly exacerbated while proceeding on a vehicle: when experiencing congested vehicular traffic conditions (i.e., slow mobility and long connections) it is possible to advance with a game, while experiencing no traffic such chance is not given (i.e., high mobility and short connections). Our contribution is that of proposing a mechanism capable of dealing with such harsh situations. Knowing in advance the APs positions, such mechanism can estimate the contact times in an urban setting, and thus provide valuable advice to a player regarding which tasks it will (not) presumably be able to accomplish, during the available connectivity time. The validity of our approach is confirmed in simulation utilizing a large set of vehicular traces collected on the streets of Pisa, Italy.