The future of web games

[Gustavo Marciano]

for you, what will be the future of the web games market?

 

Is there still a future or is the market close to death?

[TheBoneJarmer]

If I may ask, what makes you think web games are dead?

[Gustavo Marciano]

34 minutes ago, TheBoneJarmer said:

If I may ask, what makes you think web games are dead?

 

This thread,but as I said I want the opinion of other people, I do not want to be based on a single discussion.

[TheBoneJarmer]

Oh yeah, I remember reading that discussion. Well, to give my two cents. I think that discussion was pointless to begin with. I understand the question since there are not many popular hmtl5 games, but I would not call it dead, far from it. Web is a platform like PC, console and mobile. Most game devs use an engine like Unity3D or Unreal and export their game to platforms they can support. But games get exported more often to platforms where their game can run native because most games are too big to run smoothly in the browser. I mean, just look around and see how many devs actually created a 3D game in html5. Barely. And if someone did, is it probably low-poly.

But that being said, that would be the only con I can think of. The biggest pro, and the reason I decided to go for HTML5 game dev, and not Unity or Unreal or any other engine, is because it is soooo damn easy compared to writing your game in C# or C++. I mean, all you need is a good IDE for web dev and your browser. And players don't even have to download your game. Heck, if you want to, you can put your game in a cordova container and export it to Android or iOS as if it is nothing. And just look at all the available resources. There are engines like Game Maker or Construct that allow you to export your game easily, as well as lots and lots of frameworks like Phaser, Pixi, MelonJS and so on. And also, since your game is actually a webpage, it can be integrated easily in many front-end technologies like Angular, ASP.Net, PHP and even NodeJS with Electron. That is also a very powerful benefit. Not to mention webhosting. I mean, a basic webhosting service is enough to host your game on since html5 games do not tend to be gigabytes big.

Give it time. I admit I cannot think of a popular html5 game, but I am sure other forum members can fill me in on that one. I do see some gems once in a while. But those are often not only for web, but native too. They just have a web variant. You wont find yourself a whole RPG, but smaller games. But I like those, I am often very tired after work and to be able to play some small games while being half braindead is awesome, and very relaxing.

[Fornite921]

Well, web games weren't necessarily meant to be overtly complex. Nowadays everyone is using engines programming in C++ or C# at the least. What's nice is that cross browser compatibility of these engines are being seen on the web in .io games which are all multiplayer games. Web games are not dead by any means, and game developers are now making more and more real-time multiplayer games for the web.

However, if we are strictly talking about HTML5 games with no multiplayer aspect, then yeah I do think that market is "dying" but that doesn't mean you cannot make a successful HTML5 game. Web technology has gotten so much stronger which allows developers to make games more suitable for modern technology. Like TheBoneJarmer has said, there are also libraries like PixiJS and phaser that becoming more and more popular.

[mattstyles]

On 4/25/2019 at 5:11 AM, Fornite921 said:

Nowadays everyone is using engines programming in C++ or C# at the least. What's nice is that cross browser compatibility of these engines are being seen on the web in .io games which are all multiplayer games.

Erm, I don't think this is quite true, mostly because it is impossible (browsers don't execute arbitrary C++ or C# code), although I think it is just how you've explained it that makes it sound odd.

I'm assuming that you mean Unity and transpilation to JS for web browsers.

This process gets way more interesting with WASM support. If I was heading up one of those companies I would be banging the drum about WASM extremely hard, they can keep their development chain but suddenly get access to runtime engines (i.e. in the browser) that actually offer comparative performance. I'm not necessarily convinced that WASM will actually win wholesale in the browser for client applications, but, it _could_ be a very exciting time soon to work with browsers.

[SlowCrow]

On 4/26/2019 at 10:30 AM, mattstyles said:

This process gets way more interesting with WASM support. If I was heading up one of those companies I would be banging the drum about WASM extremely hard, they can keep their development chain but suddenly get access to runtime engines (i.e. in the browser) that actually offer comparative performance.

There is Unity Tiny - It is in the early stages, but it should do exactly that: https://unity.com/solutions/instant-games

[willeastcott]

Pure browser games are harder to monetize than native games. I mean, a game like Robostorm (made with PlayCanvas) is crazy fun - but successfully doing IAP in a browser game is hard.

An interesting segment for HTML5 games, though, is messenger-based games (where many of those platforms rely on embedded WebView + HTML5 games). There, HTML5 game devs has access to huge audiences.

[permith]

There's a point of investment for an HTML5 game where you say screw it and just go to a market front like Steam.  For instance https://store.steampowered.com/app/368340/CrossCode/     Has reached Steam's monthly top sellers a couple of times.   And there are quite a few other games on Steam that are actually HTML5 but don't bother to tell anyone.

____________

 

Which kind of leaves web portals with games that have much lower investment levels, attempts at gimicks, and similar.    Basically it's hard to stay relevant, when it's hard to get games that are competitive/relevant.

Also have you tried to use a portal recently,  they're well terrible, slow, ad filled, full of distractions, clogged with login flyovers, and an all around nightmare to use.

[WombatTurkey]

19 hours ago, permith said:

There's a point of investment for an HTML5 game where you say screw it and just go to a market front like Steam.  For instance https://store.steampowered.com/app/368340/CrossCode/     Has reached Steam's monthly top sellers a couple of times.   And there are quite a few other games on Steam that are actually HTML5 but don't bother to tell anyone.

____________

 

Which kind of leaves web portals with games that have much lower investment levels, attempts at gimicks, and similar.    Basically it's hard to stay relevant, when it's hard to get games that are competitive/relevant.

Also have you tried to use a portal recently,  they're well terrible, slow, ad filled, full of distractions, clogged with login flyovers, and an all around nightmare to use.

Are they still using impactJS? Just amazes me every time I think about it. I don't know if their UI is on the canvas or not, but gosh everything is just so damn impressive. 

[permith]

Heavily modified ImpactJS.   To allow them to have multiple levels being the biggest feature, and probably some things for their AI.   They have a few blog articles that talk about their tech.

[dmiiceuk]

 I think that HTML5 market is dying.  But still, web technology has gotten much better. This allows us to create successful games, more suitable for nowadays. 

[vornay]

This HTML5 game looks amazing:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1210800/Rum__Gun/

Edited January 8, 2020 by vornay

[Luke@Cocos]

HTML5 is growing wildly in China as many games were placed on hold during the new regulations last year. More and more developers started to build games using the WeChat environment which we helped build that works off the HTML5 library. So many developers were building and continue to build games for that and now other phone companies like Oppo, Samsung, vivo, Huawei, Xiaomi, and others are building mini app marketplaces that work perfectly with HTML5. With 5G also coming, speeds are at a point in some countries that downloading a game will be as fast as opening a native app. I think we are on the edge of something great. So don't be worried for the future.

[Xima]

On 1/8/2020 at 4:27 AM, vornay said:

Эта игра HTML5 выглядит потрясающе:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1210800/Rum__Gun/

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Edited December 21, 2020 by Xima

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