Guest editorial: special issue on network and systems support for games

摘要

A recent market forecast has predicted that the global market for video games will rise to $82 billion in 2017. The growth is driven by factors including advances in graphics hardware and proliferation of mobile devices. The ubiquity of network connections has also driven up the demand for online gaming, with the market forecasted to reach $35 billion by 2017. This increasing number of game players desire better playing experiences, straining the underlying network and system architecture, and introduces new research questions that require synthesis of a variety of research areas.