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Monetization is the answer. Nobody is paying $50 for web games, there's no in-app purchase system, no web gift cards in stores, and the exploitative interstitia

Monetization is the answer. Nobody is paying $50 for web games, there's no in-app purchase system, no web gift cards in stores, and the exploitative interstitial ad networks that enable free mobile games to make boatloads of money don't exist on the web. That said, there is an ecosystem of web games and you might be surprised by the sophistication of some of them. https://venge.io/ https://venge.io/ is a good example, try https://poki.com/ https://poki.com/ for a sampling of more. https://playcanvas.com/ https://playcanvas.com/ is the most advanced WebGL-specific engine.

zamadatix 5y ago
> Nobody is paying $50 for web games Unless a AAA studio releases a main title for web that will be true as there are no $50 web games to buy to make this come true. I'd guess most non-AAA game sales on Steam aren't near $50 though but both of those can still be extremely lucrative. > there's no in-app purchase system 90% of browsers support the Payment Request Web API and you're also free to make your own integrations to your payment processors directly yourself (which isn't always true of consoles/app stores). > no web gift cards in stores You can piggyback off the traditional payment backends (e.g. Google Play) and use their cards or use your own (like game specific Roblox/Fortnite cards in stores) > and the exploitative interstitial ad networks that enable free mobile games to make boatloads of money don't exist on the web I don't think you saw tons of interstitial ad companies for mobile prior to having mobile games that made sense to use them either. After all it's not like the web is incapable of delivering ads it's just there is no point in delivering these types of ads without that type of content. . I think the real reason is distribution pains. By the time you make a games impressive enough to garner strong sales it becomes a PITA to distribute via the browser. Large amounts of persistent storage are a pain to manage in browsers (if you can even get the amount you want) and delivering an entire game or designing it to be completely streamable is a ton of cost and overhead vs just serving persistent differential app updates via traditional means. You get less control of the environment the game is run in and what you get in return is worse performance and feature capability to work with out of the gate. Compare this to any other distribution means where you're able to manage distribution, use the full capabilities of the device, and more long term stable platforms with less overhead.
- modeless 5y ago
  I think you're right that the biggest technical reason is local storage. But I disagree about the difficulty of streaming. When properly implemented it comes with the huge advantage of drastically reducing install/patch/load times as well. Engine developers have been lazy and allowed install/patch/load times to get totally out of control. I think the game industry has been ignoring the huge benefit that reducing those times would bring them even on traditional platforms.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  When I looked at it, I found that incentive ad networks want to use their blobs on mobile devices. They feel that the closed binaries protect them from ad fraud. Google does offer a webgame interstitial ad network. You'll need volume for this.

zamadatix 5y ago

> Nobody is paying $50 for web games Unless a AAA studio releases a main title for web that will be true as there are no $50 web games to buy to make this come true. I'd guess most non-AAA game sales on Steam aren't near $50 though but both of those can still be extremely lucrative. > there's no in-app purchase system 90% of browsers support the Payment Request Web API and you're also free to make your own integrations to your payment processors directly yourself (which isn't always true of consoles/app stores). > no web gift cards in stores You can piggyback off the traditional payment backends (e.g. Google Play) and use their cards or use your own (like game specific Roblox/Fortnite cards in stores) > and the exploitative interstitial ad networks that enable free mobile games to make boatloads of money don't exist on the web I don't think you saw tons of interstitial ad companies for mobile prior to having mobile games that made sense to use them either. After all it's not like the web is incapable of delivering ads it's just there is no point in delivering these types of ads without that type of content. . I think the real reason is distribution pains. By the time you make a games impressive enough to garner strong sales it becomes a PITA to distribute via the browser. Large amounts of persistent storage are a pain to manage in browsers (if you can even get the amount you want) and delivering an entire game or designing it to be completely streamable is a ton of cost and overhead vs just serving persistent differential app updates via traditional means. You get less control of the environment the game is run in and what you get in return is worse performance and feature capability to work with out of the gate. Compare this to any other distribution means where you're able to manage distribution, use the full capabilities of the device, and more long term stable platforms with less overhead.

modeless 5y ago
I think you're right that the biggest technical reason is local storage. But I disagree about the difficulty of streaming. When properly implemented it comes with the huge advantage of drastically reducing install/patch/load times as well. Engine developers have been lazy and allowed install/patch/load times to get totally out of control. I think the game industry has been ignoring the huge benefit that reducing those times would bring them even on traditional platforms.
aww_dang 5y ago
When I looked at it, I found that incentive ad networks want to use their blobs on mobile devices. They feel that the closed binaries protect them from ad fraud. Google does offer a webgame interstitial ad network. You'll need volume for this.