HTML5 RPG Game, does it work?

[feyninja]

So after reading the success stories from many guys here, i want to start creating and selling html5 games.

 

But i don't have much interest in puzzle, casual game, i love RPG genre.

 

I want to create some very simple RPG game, but i'm not sure publisher will want to buy it? Because RPG should require continuing long time gameplay unlike casual game (which you can play and stop, and replay anytime). And it relied on web browser's cache to save the game, that said if someone have the habit of clearing web cache, they can't continue the game.

 

I'm very new to this and really want to hear from you guys, if there's no choice, i guess i will back to puzzle, casual game.

 

Sorry if i mistyped something.

Cheers.

[dev]

First of all, regardless of what sells or not, start small. First-time large projects have a (making this up but I'm probably close haha) 99.99% failure rate. Also, taking on too much too soon is also not conducive to learning the best either. So start small!

 

The RPG genre typically involves very large games because the point is role playing which requires immersion into some game world. To create such immersion you typically need lots of content to interact with, storylines, items, lots of environments, lots of characters etc.  So I'd suggest beginning with some smaller casual puzzle games. 

 

As for what publishers want. There is very little interest for desktop HTML5 games. They're not easy to monetize and there is huge competition from both flash as well as regular PC/Mac games outside the browser (e.g. Steam). Publishers interested in HTML5 are interested in mobile games because mobile-advertising is hot, one can circumvent the appstores and mobile traffic is growing rapidly (in some markets exponentially so). Generally mobile means you've got to work with screens between 4 and 10 inches in size and both phones and tablets are kind of converging a bit to a 7 inch average or so. That's generally better suited for puzzle games than content-rich games like RPGs. But it really depends. I played some of the most awesome RPG games on my tiny gameboy screen and was completely immersed in these worlds as a kid. Things like FinalFantasy/Pokemon style turn-based combat should be very well suited to these small devices. 

 

Saving the game state isn't a real issue. You should be able to pretty easily integrate a saving system that connects with a server. It's not super easy, but it'd be the least of my worries. Memory and sounds is probably a lot more difficult. I generally try to stay under 10mb of texture memory, you can go quite far beyond that with some tricks, but it's not straightforward. Still, a well optimized RPG doesn't have to use much memory, again just look at all the gameboy classics.

 

What's interesting about HTML5 is that it's cross-platform. If you're happy with it but feel restricted by the browser, you can wrap the games as native apps for any mobile device. Especially on tablets, a proper RPG would be cool, although the appstores are known for pretty extreme saturation and while monetization options are plenty, marketing your app is pretty tricky because once you send the player to the appstore, there's not much you can do, there's very little control or communication with the player at the point of sale.

 

Anyway, welcome to the community and good luck with your first game! I suggest to start small with a casual puzzle title and build the RPG in your spare time for fun!

[feyninja]

Thank you Developoid, i really appreciated your help.