multiplayer game server

I want to write a server-side app to manage multiplayer game communications (probably for multiple simple games, mostly turn-based). It should b开发者_开发知识库e robust and highly scalable.

I want to know a bit more about the technology posibilities I have. Does anyone have any experience with Erlang? Does it cost more development time to create a server than with other languages? is it much faster, or has better scalability than others?

What language would you say would be best?

Without knowing exactly what problem you are trying to solve, there isn't a good way to answer your question. However, Erlang does generally scale well, assuming you both code it well and architect it well. If you are considering implementing your backend as a RESTful service, I'd question any decision to use Erlang -- maybe it's still a good fit, but I'd ask you why. However, if you decided to base the backend of your game on XMPP, I'd suggest that erlang and ejabberd is a superb fit. It all depends on how you are writing the software.

Also, does it cost more in development time compared to other languages? Quite possibly. As a python expert and an Erlang learner, I can write python code in 10 minutes which will take me 2 hours to do in Erlang. But I'd bet that Joe Armstrong (Erlang inventor) could write Erlang code pretty darn quickly.

In short, your question cannot be answered accurately. I've attempted to provide some information which may help you understand why.