Matrix: Adaptive Middleware for Distributed Multiplayer Games

Building a distributed middleware infrastructure that provides the low latency required for massively multiplayer games while still maintaining consistency is non-trivial. Previous attempts have used static partitioning or clientbased peer-to-peer techniques that do not scale well to a large number of players, perform poorly under dynamic workloads or hotspots, and impose significant programming burdens on game developers. We show that it is possible to build a scalable distributed system. This system, called Matrix, is easily usable by game developers. We show experimentally that Matrix provides good performance, especially when hotspots occur, and that even with simple algorithms, Matrix’s performance is acceptable to