Sun's Open Source Massively Multiplayer Online Games

Project Darkstar, Sun's version of the online game server platform written entirely in Java technology, made its debut at the 2007 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, where Sun also announced the opening of registration for the Darkstar Playground, which will enable developers to create a wide variety of games that can be provisioned through a single server platform.

A new interview Sun Labs' Jeff Kesselman, whose official title is "chief instigator" for Project Darkstar, has just been posted on the Sun Developer Network.
Jeff says that Darkstar is, "a Sun Labs project to develop a piece of infrastructure software for latency-critical, massively scaled online applications, which translates, among other things, to massively multiplayer online games."

When asked why is Sun interested in massively multiplayer online games, Jeff says

The online game space has huge potential for Sun. Games such as World of Warcraft, Lineage, RuneScape, Final Fantasy, EverQuest, and others serve millions of subscribers and run on thousands of network servers.

Sun sees this as a potential growth market for our servers and for services. The industry estimates that it currently costs about $30 million to create the basics for massively multiplayer online games such as World of Warcraft or EverQuest. By releasing software that reduces development costs, we hope to enable more developers to participate in the rapidly expanding online game market and to create growth opportunities for Sun hardware and service businesses there.

Developers can sign up at the Project Darkstar community site and they can learn more about the architecture.

Mind Control Software is using Project Darkstar. In a presentation given at the Austin Game Conference, they list the reasons why:

Project Darkstar

• Modern approach
• Well contemplated
• Appropriately abstracted
• Keep focus and flexibility
• Thriving user community

Technology

• World class expertise
• Scalable, Fault Tolerant, Reliable Server Systems
• Open your eyes to cross-platform
• Massive Scalability
• Plug-in architecture

Sun Microsystems

• The backing of Sun Microsystems
• Hosting
• Generous license agreement
• Commercial license