The aim of the peer-to-peer (P2P) decentralized gaming industry has shifted towards realistic gaming environment (GE) support for game players (GPs). Recent innovations in the metaverse have motivated the gaming industry to look beyond augmented reality and virtual reality engines, which improve the reality of virtual game worlds. In gaming metaverses (GMs), GPs can play, socialize, and trade virtual objects in the GE. On game servers (GSs), the collected GM data are analyzed by artificial intelligence models to personalize the GE according to the GP. However, communication with GSs suffers from high-end latency, bandwidth concerns, and issues regarding the security and privacy of GP data, which pose a severe threat to the emerging GM landscape. Thus, we proposed a scheme, Game-o-Meta, that integrates federated learning in the GE, with GP data being trained on local devices only. We envisioned the GE over a sixth-generation tactile internet service to address the bandwidth and latency issues and assure real-time haptic control. In the GM, the GP's game tasks are collected and trained on the GS, and then a pre-trained model is downloaded by the GP, which is trained using local data. The proposed scheme was compared against traditional schemes based on parameters such as GP task offloading, GP avatar rendering latency, and GS availability. The results indicated the viability of the proposed scheme.
Keywords: 5G; P2P gaming; federated averaging; federated learning; metaverse.