Massively multiplayer role-playing gaming (MMORPG) has become a very popular entertainment in Asia. Along with the success of the massively multiplayer role-playing gaming industry in Asia, online gaming-related crimes have grown at an amazing rate. Most of the criminal cases are related to virtual properties since markets have developed for the virtual properties giving them real world values. There has been little research and resulting technologies for MMORPG virtual property protection. In order to reduce the crimes and protect online gaming systems, one potential solution is protecting the virtual properties in online gaming systems. In this paper, we propose a virtual property management language to meter the use of virtual property. The language provides a framework for managing the use of virtual properties and recording the history of transactions to trace the life of virtual properties. Read more...

While multi-player online games are very successful, their fast deployment suffers from their server-based architecture. Indeed, servers both limit the scalability of the games and increase deployment costs. However, they make it easier to control the game (e.g. by preventing cheating and providing support for billing). Peer-to-peer, i.e. transfer of the game functions on each each player's machine, is an attractive communication model for online gaming. We investigate here the challenges of peer-to-peer gaming, hoping that this discussion will generate a broader interest in the research community. Read more...

As mobile devices and wireless networks are becoming ubiquitous, the interest of users to deploy real-time applications, e.g. online gaming or Voice-over-IP in such environments is also increasing. Due to the difference between traditional and wireless networks, in particular in terms of available bandwidth and network structure, the concepts used for supporting real-time applications in both networks are different. This paper gives an overview of the key technical challenges that are fundamental and need to be solved in order to easily support real-time applications in wireless and mobile environments. In a first step, issues related to service provisioning in mobile networks are discussed. This is followed by a look at the Quality of Service supported by wireless networks and possible techniques for improving it. Finally, concepts for securing the communication between the users of real-time applications in wireless and mobile networks are presented. For each of these issues, we provide a detailed analysis and an overview of the state-of-the-art. Moreover, we illustrate the main points using distributed online games as an example. Read more...