Techniques for virtual area generation and manipulation are described herein. The described techniques may be used, for example, for virtual areas in electronically presented content items, such as video games and other media items. In some examples, one or more interfaces may be provided that allow content developers to provide and specify a set of rules associated with the virtual area. The set of rules may include, for example, terrain rules, object rules, and other rules associated with other aspects of the virtual area. The terrain rules may include rules for generating, distributing, and/or manipulating different types of terrain, such as such as flat and/or buildable space, mountains, valleys, berms, rivers, lakes, oceans, deserts, forests, and many others. The object rules may include rules for generating, distributing, and/or manipulating different types of objects, such as trees, bushes, rocks, snow, grass, fish, birds, animals, people, vehicles, buildings, and others.

A distributed game engine for provisioning resources for an online game includes a plurality of management nodes and a plurality of processing nodes. The management nodes are configured to distribute functional portions of the distributed game engine over the plurality of processing nodes. A resource allocation mode is constructed from user inputs game states of the online game and success criteria included in game play training data. A resource allocation agent is used to access the resource allocation model and to communicate with a configuration agent to identify the processing nodes required for processing specific ones of the functional portions for the online game, based on the resource allocation dictated by the resource allocation model. A process synchronization layer interfaces with the processing nodes and the management nodes to provision the resources for executing the functional portions for the online game in order to produce video frames for rendering at client devices of the users.

A machine, such as a router (or other network appliance capable of filtering incoming packets), determines whether a packet is from a location that is likely to be capable of establishing an acceptable connection quality. If it is determined that an acceptable connection quality is unlikely to be obtained, the machine blocks the packet so that the connection is not established. If it is determined that the acceptable connection quality is likely to be obtained, the packet is received, and the connection is allowed. As a consequence of blocking packets from locations that are expected to have a poor connection, connections are not established with servers that will provide poor service and a poor user experience.

A method includes multicasting by a server center of streaming interactive video/audio streams to multiple destinations via an outbound Internet traffic interface. A given video/audio stream is routed to multiple destinations simultaneously. At least one of the video/audio streams is received at a delay buffer of the server center, the delay buffer storing a replayable portion of at least one of the video/audio streams.

Embodiments of the present invention allow players to instantly access and begin playing games through an online service. To make the games instantly available, an online service keeps instances of games running in active memory waiting for a player to be added. The game instances running in active memory are not attached to a player profile or an I/O channel from a game client. Once the player requests a game, the player's player profile is loaded into the running game instance and an I/O channel is mapped from the game client to the game instance. From the player's perspective, the preloaded game instances allow the player to browse directly from game to game with very little delay. To optimize the usage of server-side resources, historical usage data may be analyzed to anticipate demand for different games.

A system, method, and computer program product for collaborative online gaming, including at least one of providing a central repository master browser system; providing an experience calibrated match-making service; providing a dynamic multiplayer server component auto deployment and aggregation system; providing a lobby centric simultaneous and collaborative client game play launching feature; and providing a video game screen over-layer technology giving users access to a control interface while inside a video game being played.

A system, method, and computer program product for collaborative online gaming, including at least one of providing a central repository master browser system; providing an experience calibrated match-making service; providing a dynamic multiplayer server component auto deployment and aggregation system; providing a lobby centric simultaneous and collaborative client game play launching feature; and providing a video game screen over-layer technology giving users access to a control interface while inside a video game being played.

A distributed game engine for provisioning resources for an online game includes a plurality of management nodes and a plurality of processing nodes. The management nodes are configured to distribute functional portions of the distributed game engine over the plurality of processing nodes. A resource allocation mode is constructed from user inputs game states of the online game and success criteria included in game play training data. A resource allocation agent is used to access the resource allocation model and to communicate with a configuration agent to identify the processing nodes required for processing specific ones of the functional portions for the online game, based on the resource allocation dictated by the resource allocation model. A process synchronization layer interfaces with the processing nodes and the management nodes to provision the resources for executing the functional portions for the online game in order to produce video frames for rendering at client devices of the users.

A system, method, and computer program product for collaborative online gaming, including at least one of providing a central repository master browser system; providing an experience calibrated match-making service; providing a dynamic multiplayer server component auto deployment and aggregation system; providing a lobby centric simultaneous and collaborative client game play launching feature; and providing a video game screen over-layer technology giving users access to a control interface while inside a video game being played.

Embodiments of the present invention allow players to instantly access and begin playing games through an online service. To make the games instantly available, an online service keeps instances of games running in active memory waiting for a player to be added. The game instances running in active memory are not attached to a player profile or an I/O channel from a game client. Once the player requests a game, the player's player profile is loaded into the running game instance and an I/O channel is mapped from the game client to the game instance. From the player's perspective, the preloaded game instances allow the player to browse directly from game to game with very little delay. To optimize the usage of server-side resources, historical usage data may be analyzed to anticipate demand for different games.