We all tend to focus on the big guys like Zynga, with millions of users but the reality is that there are a lot of smaller companies, with limited resources that make a decent living by developing a loyal following.

Doing the same things that govern customer loyality in traditional businesses will help anyone grow their gaming business. Listen to players, build community and give reasons to support your company.

I guess the answer is “it depends.”

Smartfox will probably work as well as anything. It does cost money, but if you’re running an online game, you’re going to need a budget even if it’s a hobby project (because server’s aren’t free). It gives you some nice things, and it’s easy to learn and get running quickly.

At first, I chose RedDwarf because it is free, but now I would choose it anyway. It’s harder to get going (more to learn, and not simple to design for), but once you cross that chasm, it’s worth it. Single-threaded code model, automatic persistence, and (eventually) scaling horizontally with no extra effort are some really strong features that Smartfox doesn’t have. I am not sure I could go back to dealing with race condition debugging and the like.

What to use will depend on your time, skills, goals, and preferences. If you need experience with multiplayer programming, I’d recommend starting with Smartfox. Don’t let the 20 user limit stop you from learning. If you are already an advanced programmer and want some horsepower, I’d recommend diving into RedDwarf.

Good luck!

thanks in advance