Sync-MS: Synchronized Messaging Service for Real-Time Multi-Player Distributed Games

In this paper we introduce the concept of "fair order" of player action messages, and propose a game-independent, network-based service that balances the trade-off between response time and fair order of player actions. The proposed service, called Sync-MS, uses two mechanisms, Sync-out and Sync-in, to address two desired features of client-server based, online multi-player games, "state update fairness" and "player action fairness."