What’s a Game Server?

Game server is either a local or remote type of server made by various gaming clients for the purpose of providing multiplayer capability in gaming. The resulting product is therefore called multiplayer games. Majority of those games you see and play online are done through the use of a game server.

The hosting of games is made possible by game server providers. These are companies that rent the game servers to earn. The usual scenario is that a group of gamers called clans rent a couple of servers for a certain game and then the members will cooperate in paying for that rent. The level of accessibility given by the web server in turn includes providing tools for configuration and controlling of web servers and modification of the game.

A dedicated game server on the other hand is a more sophisticated system of tracking players and their profiles and then disseminating them to fellow players. It is in practice a peer-to-peer type of application that needs another computer for hosting the server program.

Today, there are two common types of game server. These are dedicated and listen servers. Listen servers works when the server functions entirely the same as that of a game client. In simple terms, it is carried out by giving a player the ability to both host and participate in a certain game during the same instance. However, as soon as the client is terminated, the server will also be terminated in the process.

The unique characteristic of a listen server is that it is used most of the time by a small number of people playing together. The most popular example is a LAN (local area networking) party. The reason for this is because there’s a bigger need for bandwidth and processing for clients operating in a single computer or machine.

The second type of game server is called dedicated server. Its main feature is that it operates separately from the client. What makes it different to the first one is that it supplies better bandwidth and processing power simply because it is operated in dedicated and individual computers.

So if we are to sum up, a dedicated server is the better of the two when it comes to hosting game servers for multiplayer gaming. For instance, the popular massive multiplayer online gaming titles run on dedicated game servers. The end result would be better gaming experience.