In the past 6 months I’ve switched jobs from being a web developer to being a server side game developer.  So far it’s been an excellent career shift.  I get to focus on my true passions, intelligent back-end code and no longer having to waste my time with frustrating design challenges (there is a separate team that does that).

Having said that, when developing large Facebook virtual worlds, there are a lot of client/server communication.  For example, each time someone buys something, each time you buy something, etc…  Currently, a lot of games wait for the server to respond, but why should we?  There are a lot of server calls that are done for informational purposes; just to keep the database up-to-date.  So I ask you, why should the end user wait for the server to catch up?  Let’s examine a simple approach to alleviate the need for the client to wait. Read more »