Assessing the Quality of Experience of Cloud Gaming Services

230 Pages·2022·3.981 MB·English

by  Steven Schmidt

T-Labs Series in Telecommunication Services
Steven Schmidt
Assessing
the Quality
of Experience
of Cloud Gaming
Services
T-Labs Series in Telecommunication Services
SeriesEditors
SebastianMöller,QualityandUsabilityLab,TechnischeUniversitätBerlin,Berlin,
Germany
AxelKüpper,TelekomInnovationLaboratories,TechnischeUniversitätBerlin,
Berlin,Germany
AlexanderRaake,AudiovisualTechnologyGroup,TechnischeUniversität
Ilmenau,Ilmenau,Germany
It is the aim of the Springer Series in Telecommunication Services to foster an
interdisciplinary exchange of knowledge addressing all topics which are essential
for developing high-quality and highly usable telecommunication services. This
includes basic concepts of underlying technologies, distribution networks, archi-
tecturesandplatformsforservicedesign,deploymentandadaptation,aswellasthe
users’ perception of telecommunication services. By taking a vertical perspective
over all these steps, we aim to provide the scientific bases for the development
and continuous evaluation of innovative services which provide a better value for
their users. In fact, the human-centric design of high-quality telecommunication
services – the so called “quality engineering” – forms an essential topic of this
series,asitwillultimatelyleadtobetteruserexperienceandacceptance.Theseries
isdirectedtowardsbothscientistsandpractitionersfromallrelateddisciplinesand
industries.
**Indexing:booksinthisseriesareindexinginScopus**
Steven Schmidt
Assessing the Quality of
Experience of Cloud Gaming
Services
StevenSchmidt
TechnischeUniversitätBerlin
QualityandUsabilityLab
Berlin,Germany
ISSN2192-2810 ISSN2192-2829 (electronic)
T-LabsSeriesinTelecommunicationServices
ISBN978-3-031-06010-6 ISBN978-3-031-06011-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06011-3
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Tomymotherandsister
Preface
In today’s age, various telecommunications services have become indispensable.
However, not only telephony and video conferences but also gaming services
determine the everyday life of many people. Driven by improvements in domains
suchasvideoencoding,virtualization,andprocessingpower,anewparadigmcalled
cloud gaming emerged. These services execute a video game on a distant cloud
serverandstreamtheresultingsceneasavideototheuser,whointurncancontrol
the game remotely. Although this new type of service offers many advantages, it
alsoposesmanychallengestonetworkprovidersandserviceoperators,sincecloud
gamingservicesareparticularlysusceptibletolatencyandrequireahighbandwidth.
This book describes methods for measuring the quality of experience (QoE) of
cloud gaming services which will not only allow comparable and valid research
but also provide all necessary means to collect data for the development of QoE
prediction models. These models can be used to plan network infrastructures and
to optimize resource allocation. Aiming to establish a link between academia
and industry, and to reduce the gap between quality of service (QoS) and QoE
research, the presented work strongly contributes to recommendations of the
TelecommunicationStandardizationSectoroftheInternationalTelecommunication
Union(ITU-T).Thereaderwillhopefullyunderstandthatknowledgeaboutvarious
influencing factors, assessment methods, and prediction models is necessary to
developandmaintainacloudgamingservicesuccessfully.Thebookiswrittenfor
students,researchers,andengineersinterestedintheassessmentoftheQoEofcloud
gamingservices.Thepresentedassessmentmethodandotherresearchfindingsmay
inparticularbeusefulforpersonsaimingtodevelopgamingQoEpredictionmodels
and to investigate specific parameters of a cloud gaming service by means of user
studies.
The work presented was carried out within the scope of my PhD dissertation,
which was conducted under the supervision of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sebastian Möller in
theQualityandUsabilityLabatTechnischeUniversitätBerlinfrom2016to2021.
Berlin,Germany StevenSchmidt
November2021
vii
Acknowledgments
The path to finalizing a dissertation is long and full of obstacles, but I have met
numerouspeoplewhohelpedmeovercomeallthesechallengesoverthepastyears,
andIamtrulythankful.
Foremost,IwouldliketoexpressmydeepestthankstomysupervisorProf.Dr.-
Ing. Sebastian Möller for providing me with guidance throughout all these years.
Thank you very much for your continuous support, for all the time we spent with
discussions,foryourrecommendationsaboutvariousdecisionsIhadtomake,and
forenablingexcitingopportunitiesformypersonalgrowth.
MytimeattheQualityandUsabilityLabwasnotonlyjoyfulduetoaninteresting
researchtopicbutfirstandforemostduetoallmygreatcolleagues,ofwhomsome
turnedintogoodfriends.
Among these, my greatest thanks go to Saman Zadtootaghaj. You were an
inspiration in many aspects of our close collaboration. Thank you for being such
a good friend, for your reliable and professional support, for always being honest
andopen-minded,andforthemanyinterestingdiscussionswehadtoprogressinour
research.IwanttogivespecialthankstoBabakNaderi.Thankyouforalwaysbeing
there,sharingyourexperiences,introducingmetothechallengesofcrowdsourcing,
and the many interesting discussions about statistics we had. You helped me not
losemyselfinmythoughtprocessesandaretrulyagreatteamplayer.Furthermore,
I would like to express my gratitude to Saeed Shafiee Sabet for the delightful and
constructive collaboration. You showed me different perspectives on our complex
topic, and I could always count on you. A great thank you also goes to Nabajeet
Barman. It was a pleasure to work with you, and I am thankful for all the great
adviceyougavemeontheacademicandpersonallevel.Thankyou,JustusBeyer,
forinitiatingthegamingQoEresearchattheQULab,introducingmetoyourwork,
andtheinterestingresearchproposalyouwrote.
MytraveltoSydneywithBenjaminWeiss,ThiloMichael,andStefanUhrigwas
oneofthemostremarkableexperiencesIhadinthepastyears.Ialwaysliketothink
aboutthistimeandalsowanttothankyouthreeforyourscientificsupport.Thank
you,Benjamin,foryourhelpwiththedevelopmentofmyquestionnaire;thankyou,
Thilo,foryoursupportwithourdailyteachinglife;andthankyou,Stefan,forthe
ix
x Acknowledgments
many fruitfuldiscussion we had about user engagement and statisticalmethods as
well as with proofreading my dissertation. And also, thank you to Prof. Andrew
JohnstonformakingthisvisitpossiblebyhostingusattheUTS.
Thank you to Jan-Niklas Voigt-Antons, Tanja Kojic, Falk Schiffner, Gabriel
Mittag, Martin Burghart, Maija Poikela, Patrick Ehrenbrink, Friedemann Köster,
and many others for being such a great team at the QU Lab, for many fruitful
discussions, advise, and encouragements. And of course, also, a big thank you
to Irene Hube-Achter and Yasmin Hillebrenner for your amazing administrative
work and for always being supportive, pragmatic, and for creating a pleasant
atmosphere in our office. You did more than one can hope for. Thank you also to
Tobias Jettkowskiforyour technical support,whichenabled varioususerstudiesI
conducted.
Iwillcherishthememoriesofallourjointtravels,Iwillmissthecheesefondue
inGenevawithyou,andIwishyouallthebestinyourfuturelife.
Iwouldalsoliketothankmycommitteemembers,Prof.Dr.LeaSkorin-Kapov
andDr.RaimundSchatz.Ihighlyappreciateyoureffortandhelpinco-examining
mydissertation.AlsooutsideoftheQULab,Iwouldliketothankcolleagueswithin
theITU-TStudyGroup12andQualinetmembersfortheirgreatwork.
Lastly, I want to express my dearest gratitude to my family and friends for
your understanding and ongoing support throughout these years. You allowed me
todevelopmyself,toworkcarefree,andencouragedmeatanytime.
Contents
1 Introduction .................................................................. 1
1.1 Motivation............................................................... 1
1.2 Scope .................................................................... 4
1.3 Structure................................................................. 6
References..................................................................... 7
2 QualityFactorsandFeatureSpaceofCloudGamingServices......... 9
2.1 QualityofExperienceResearch........................................ 9
2.2 AnIntroductiontoCloudGaming ..................................... 14
2.2.1 ComponentsofaCloudGamingSystem...................... 14
2.2.2 InfluencingFactorsonGamingQoE........................... 17
2.3 GamingQoETaxonomyforCloudGamingServices................. 22
2.3.1 Game-relatedQualityAspects ................................. 25
2.3.2 PlayerExperienceAspects..................................... 26
2.4 Summary ................................................................ 29
References..................................................................... 30
3 MethodsforAssessingGamingQoE....................................... 37
3.1 OverviewofAssessmentMethods..................................... 37
3.1.1 ClassificationofAssessmentMethods......................... 38
3.1.2 Questionnaire-BasedAssessmentofGamingQoE ........... 41
3.1.3 MethodsConsideredforResearchObjectives................. 48
3.2 ComparisonofInteractiveandPassiveTestParadigm(Study3.2)... 49
3.2.1 AppliedMethodologytoInvestigatetheTestParadigms..... 50
3.3 DesigningSubjectiveTestsMeasuringGamingQoE ................. 59
3.3.1 StandardizationActivities...................................... 59
3.3.2 TestDesignforITU-TRec.G.1072 ........................... 62
3.4 Summary ................................................................ 72
References..................................................................... 73
xi