A scalable platform for mobile social gaming

This paper presents an overview of the functionality and of the architectural design of AMUSE (Agent-based Multi-User Social Environment), an open source social gaming platform that leverages the power of industrial-strength agent technologies. AMUSE is conceived as a PaaS (Platform as a Service) tool that enables service providers, like game and community portals, to relief game developers from the burden of implementing horizontal functionality common to a large set of games. This paper first motivates the development of AMUSE. It then describes the architecture of the multi-agent system that implements the core of AMUSE and it relates the various types of agents with the functionality that AMUSE provides. The paper continues with a reasoned list of related platforms available in the literature and on the Web. The list includes platforms from big players of the Web arena and lower-profile proposals that gained significant acceptance. Finally, the paper summarizes the current state of development of AMUSE.