CryptoArcade: A Cloud Gaming System With Blockchain-Based Token Economy

Abstract

Cloud gaming is a novel service provisioning technology that offloads parts of game software from terminals to powerful cloud infrastructures. However, the commercial charging model for cloud gaming is still in its infancy. In this article, we reveal the deficiencies of existing cloud gaming pricing models and propose CryptoArcade, a token-based cloud gaming system that adopts cryptocurrency as a payment method. Using cryptocurrency, CryptoArcade provides a transparent and resource-aware pricing method, enabling a time irrelevant silent payment on the floating price to protect players’ interests, which avoids the Quality of Experience (QoE) degradation caused by traditional dynamic models. While CryptoArcade can solve the problem of pricing strategies, players still face decision headaches caused by having commission overhead and pre-deposit amounts on blockchains. To better understand players’ trading behaviors in this decision-making, we consider a marketplace where players trade tokens through smart contracts before gaming sessions. Considering the uncertainty of future token consumption, we use Prospect Theory (PT) in modeling and obtain the optimal solution in closed form. When comparing with the benchmark expect utility theory (EUT), we show that with the same external factors, EUT players are more likely to buy tokens than PT ones.

Publication
IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing