Building an Open Source Backend for Video Games with Elixir

In this talk, Manuel Camejo and Tomás Arjovsky of Lambda describe their work on building an open-source backend for video games using Elixir. They discuss Lambda's focus on distributed systems, cryptography, and the transition to the gaming industry. They detail the development of two different games—'Curse of Miror,' a fast-paced multiplayer game, and 'Champions of Miror,' an idle RPG Auto Battler. The presentation covers their decision to use Elixir over other technologies like Unity due to flexibility, cost-effectiveness, ease of deployment, and the language's strength in building and managing concurrent applications. They elaborate on the server architecture, including their use of GenServers, web sockets, and a separation of concerns that allows for efficient and scalable backend solutions. Demonstrations of their debugging tools and benchmarking results under load scenarios are also highlighted. The presentation concludes with future directions, such as further optimizing performance and potentially shifting to different protocols.