Creating a Multiplayer Browser Game with LiveView: A Use Case

The talk by Gonçalo Tomás at ElixirConf EU 2024 centers around his journey in using LiveView to build a multiplayer browser game. Gonçalo starts with his background, stating his passion for games and his desire to learn LiveView by working on an engaging project—recreating a browser game from his youth. He explains the advantages of LiveView's stateful connections and its simplicity in bypassing traditional front-end and back-end team separations commonly encountered in modern web applications. The genre explored is multiplayer browser games, focusing on how their simple mechanics and full-page reloads can be significantly enhanced using real-time updates via LiveView. Gonçalo describes different game titles like Gladiatus, Travian, Ikariam, and OGame, noting their core mechanisms and player engagement methods. He highlights how LiveView can improve user experience by eliminating full-page reloads and utilizing real-time event processing and Phoenix PubSub for better interaction. Throughout the presentation, he shares his prototype’s development stages, the data model configuration, and the encountered challenges. Gonçalo remarks on the potential of LiveView for similar projects and encourages others to undertake such endeavors.