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I've been looking into web services for making multiplayer games and was just wondering how feasible would it be?

What I would like to do is make a simple MMORPG that uses a turn based fighting system, are there any inherent limitations with web services which would make this difficult and not worth my time?

Also out of curiosity would a faster paced multiplayer game be workable using web services? Something like a top/down shooter similar in pace to games like asteroid?

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    \$\begingroup\$ In order to accurately answer this question, we'd need to know the number of players you expect to be logged in simultaneously. \$\endgroup\$
    – Jordaan Mylonas
    Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 13:10
  • \$\begingroup\$ For faster paced games, a web service is probably not the best option. \$\endgroup\$
    – thedaian
    Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 13:55
  • \$\begingroup\$ web services are somewhat monodirectional, how are you going to react to server-generated events? by polling? \$\endgroup\$
    – FxIII
    Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 15:24
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Jordaan Mylonas well proabbly no more than 100 to 200 peeps, but what if it became an incredibly successful game with tens of thousands of users? Would web services just fall apart? \$\endgroup\$
    – meds
    Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 15:27
  • \$\begingroup\$ @FxIII Well I figured web service functions could be called to keep the game up to date with everything. Like a call to a web serive every update cycle in the game to grab wahtever changes has happened in the server.. \$\endgroup\$
    – meds
    Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 15:28

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To be able to handle the number of simultaneous users that you intend to, for any game relying on realtime interaction, you'd typically need a dedicated server with a mighty strong/fast connection, running a direct tcp/ip connection to each client.

Even for something turn based, such as chess or magic the gathering, if you tried to implement an RPC or REST (http tunnelling) service, the resulting speed drop with 200 simultaneous connections to a single server would degrade the user experience to the point of frustration.

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You should look into Electro Server, or if you can dumb down the design a bit and make everything play asynchronously like a lot of facebook games do then using a RESTful webservice setup can work very nicely... Otherwise Jordaan Mylonas said it all pretty well.

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the throughput is important and by using a web service, you will increase the size of the message by unnecessary information inside your header messages. I would advise you to make your own customize web service over a tcp or udp connection.

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