Introductory question: what is a good server for multiplayer game?

Hello,
I am VERY far away from designing a multiplayer game, but I just wanted to know what is the best kind of server to use if I had to make one? I looked at Photon, but it seems really expensive, although I also heard that it is very good. Are there other servers than Photon that are good but not as expensive?

Also: What if I just rented a plain dedicated server? What kind of code would I have to put onto the server? Would this code be different that putting it on something like Photon?

 

Photon is *not* expensive... compared to the many hundreds, maybe thousands of hours away from being able to take advantage of it, let alone rebuild it.

If you're really interested in multiplayer games - which is fair enough, that why I'm here - I suggest the following challenge:

1) Build a 'guess the number' game.
2) Build the same game for two players, sharing a keyboard.
3) Build the same game, using Photon Cloud (alternatively, a RESTFUL design using ASP or PHP etc.).
3b) Optional - build the same game in a C# console application - handling the networking, serialisation and hosting yourself.
4) Add more features, or repeat with a more complex game.

 

the process of learning stuff step-by-step is important, sure. but i think he wants a list of opportunity to handle a multiplayer game. i just got the same problem. so far this is what i know:

1. You can code your network logic from scratch by yourself (thats the thousends of hours, npsf3000 is talkin about)
2. The inbuild Unity-Networking
3. Photon-Networking

I would like to know alternatives too. its better to know stuff, before wasting time by testing everything. try-error is a good way of learning, but its time consuming as hell.

 

Just for clarification I'm not suggesting trial and error, I'm showing a simple straightforward process that will take you through some of the key concepts as simply and quickly as possible.

Feel free to learn about some alternatives (like a dozen or so options I deliberately excluded as they are too expensive, time consuming, complicated, esoteric or specialised)... but without even basic hands on learning I suspect you'll simply be wasting time.