Hi, I want to make an online flash game, it will have social features but the gameplay will be primarily single-player. For example, no two players will appear on the screen at once, the social interaction will be through asynchronous messages, there won't be real-time chat or anything. Much of the logic would happen in the client, the server would validate the client logic, but it wouldn't need to be totally synchronous, which is why I'm thinking polling might be satisfactory.

I have read in many places that socket servers can be more efficient than using polling for online games, but is that mainly a consideration for games that are more multi-player with more mult-player interactions than the game I have descriebed? If many users are playing online at the same time, but each playing a relatively isolated game, and not interacting to in real-time with each players, could polling be okay, or would using sockets be advisable no matter what if you have an online game that you envision many people playing at the same time? Thanks!