

This stands in stark contrast to other areas of software development, where maintainability and ease of use generally take precedence over raw performance. Performance is so important in game programming that languages and development tools are regularly chosen solely based on their performance.

If you shudder thinking about the fact that Java executables are interpreted, you are probably a game developer who understands the critical issue of performance in games. You'll see how Java makes it surprisingly easy to tackle many of the network challenges faced with other languages and development environments. This article explains networking support in Java and how it can be used to build multiplayer Web games.

Because of its power and ease of use, standard networking support in Java is probably the most compelling reason for game developers to give Java a closer look.
