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Installing a native unity game requires more trust than running a game in a web browser. Web browser games would also work on platforms like Chromebooks, and do

Installing a native unity game requires more trust than running a game in a web browser. Web browser games would also work on platforms like Chromebooks, and don't require Google's or Apple's store approval, with their 30% cut.

jaegerpicker 5y ago
And Streaming games does that even better over WebRTC in the browser and we have that today! With a good internet connection (like 5g that is rolling out) the experience is fantastic. I bought my kids iPad Mini's for christmas, they have both 5g and we have 1gb internet at home and GeForce Now and XBox Cloud Gaming have been absolutely great for them. A ps5 controller and the ipad mini can be the best gaming device available today IMO.
- nullifidian 5y ago
  Streaming games is no different from distribution using a large platform/store with accompanying commissions -- you can't do it independently as a small company. Also more demanding towards one's internet connection and has higher running costs, since you have to pay for both traffic and a server side GPU, so not viable for a certain percentage of lower budget/cheaper/free games.
  - jaegerpicker 5y ago
    Almost no one can do game development as a small company without a large platform of some kind. The economies of scale are just too much for small indie dev style game studios to overcome. Speaking as someone that was an indie dev and has been around the game industry for 20 years. I highly doubt that is going to change anytime soon. Webassembly certainly won't fix that issue. I'm not sure what that comment has to do with the subject. With Webassembly you won't have to pay for server side gpu but you will have to pay for discovery, hosting/bandwidth, payment, likely some form of advertising, and some level of support. There is no free lunch and large platforms will nearly always win for software distribution.
    - nullifidian 5y ago
      I'm not denying any of that, and said something similar in another comment. But Minecraft, Escape from Tarkov came into existence without dependence on a store or a platform. Same for Runescape, albeit in a different time. WASM+WebGPU will make an appearance of such things more possible in 2022+. It's just a technical capability. A web implementation (of an online game) could come in addition to the ones available on Steam and Android/Apple, etc.
kllrnohj 5y ago
And where are you going to get your game assets from? Are you going to try and stream those over the network? Good luck with that. Or are you going to show a long loading screen as you try and fight with local storage limits to prefetch all your assets? To give you a scope of the problem of game assets, "small" indie games like Stardew Valley or Terraria are close to 500MB. How on earth are you going to deploy that on the web? And if you are assuming a reliable, super-fast internet connection to stream game assets over (along with paying for the CDN to host it), well cloud gaming already does this better and already exists in a meaningful way. Why struggle to fight with the incredibly pathetic limits of a web browser when you can just stream a video?
- nullifidian 5y ago
  >"small" indie games like Stardew Valley or Terraria are close to 500MB. How on earth are you going to deploy that on the web? With lazy loading? Or just an installation progress bar. What's the problem? The user has to click on the permissions dialog, allowing extended space usage, and that's it. >reliable, super-fast internet connection It wouldn't need a connection more reliable than what Steam requires for proper functioning. >along with paying for the CDN to host it I assure you the costs for a minimally successful game are minuscule when compared to the 30% cut Steam takes. What you lose is the exposure that a release on a store like Steam gives you. That's not an insignificant problem, and is much more problematic than all the technical stuff you've mentioned. >Why struggle to fight with the incredibly pathetic limits of a web browser when you can just stream a video? Answered in a different comment.
  - kllrnohj 5y ago
    > With lazy loading? And now you're back to 2006 era performance on a good day. 72 Mbit/s would be considered a pretty good internet connection. It's also the speed of a PS3's blu-ray drive. People have been complaining about the 80-100MB/s on the outgoing generation of consoles for a long time now. Regressing by ~10x isn't a compelling argument. > Or just an installation progress bar. What's the problem? Without background downloads or updates? Every time someone wants to play your game, they're forced to stare at a progress bar that can easily take upwards of an hour depending on the game ("smaller" 3d games like subnautica push 10GB)? And you somehow don't see the problem? > I assure you the costs for a minimally successful game are minuscule when compared to the 30% cut Steam takes. And I assure you that you don't have to deploy on steam, either. You can both be a native game and get all the benefits of it and not pay anyone an app store fee! You don't have to suffer the web's treadmill of being a decade+ behind to have that.

jaegerpicker 5y ago

And Streaming games does that even better over WebRTC in the browser and we have that today! With a good internet connection (like 5g that is rolling out) the experience is fantastic. I bought my kids iPad Mini's for christmas, they have both 5g and we have 1gb internet at home and GeForce Now and XBox Cloud Gaming have been absolutely great for them. A ps5 controller and the ipad mini can be the best gaming device available today IMO.

nullifidian 5y ago
Streaming games is no different from distribution using a large platform/store with accompanying commissions -- you can't do it independently as a small company. Also more demanding towards one's internet connection and has higher running costs, since you have to pay for both traffic and a server side GPU, so not viable for a certain percentage of lower budget/cheaper/free games.
- jaegerpicker 5y ago
  Almost no one can do game development as a small company without a large platform of some kind. The economies of scale are just too much for small indie dev style game studios to overcome. Speaking as someone that was an indie dev and has been around the game industry for 20 years. I highly doubt that is going to change anytime soon. Webassembly certainly won't fix that issue. I'm not sure what that comment has to do with the subject. With Webassembly you won't have to pay for server side gpu but you will have to pay for discovery, hosting/bandwidth, payment, likely some form of advertising, and some level of support. There is no free lunch and large platforms will nearly always win for software distribution.
  - nullifidian 5y ago
    I'm not denying any of that, and said something similar in another comment. But Minecraft, Escape from Tarkov came into existence without dependence on a store or a platform. Same for Runescape, albeit in a different time. WASM+WebGPU will make an appearance of such things more possible in 2022+. It's just a technical capability. A web implementation (of an online game) could come in addition to the ones available on Steam and Android/Apple, etc.

kllrnohj 5y ago

And where are you going to get your game assets from? Are you going to try and stream those over the network? Good luck with that. Or are you going to show a long loading screen as you try and fight with local storage limits to prefetch all your assets? To give you a scope of the problem of game assets, "small" indie games like Stardew Valley or Terraria are close to 500MB. How on earth are you going to deploy that on the web? And if you are assuming a reliable, super-fast internet connection to stream game assets over (along with paying for the CDN to host it), well cloud gaming already does this better and already exists in a meaningful way. Why struggle to fight with the incredibly pathetic limits of a web browser when you can just stream a video?

nullifidian 5y ago
>"small" indie games like Stardew Valley or Terraria are close to 500MB. How on earth are you going to deploy that on the web? With lazy loading? Or just an installation progress bar. What's the problem? The user has to click on the permissions dialog, allowing extended space usage, and that's it. >reliable, super-fast internet connection It wouldn't need a connection more reliable than what Steam requires for proper functioning. >along with paying for the CDN to host it I assure you the costs for a minimally successful game are minuscule when compared to the 30% cut Steam takes. What you lose is the exposure that a release on a store like Steam gives you. That's not an insignificant problem, and is much more problematic than all the technical stuff you've mentioned. >Why struggle to fight with the incredibly pathetic limits of a web browser when you can just stream a video? Answered in a different comment.
- kllrnohj 5y ago
  > With lazy loading? And now you're back to 2006 era performance on a good day. 72 Mbit/s would be considered a pretty good internet connection. It's also the speed of a PS3's blu-ray drive. People have been complaining about the 80-100MB/s on the outgoing generation of consoles for a long time now. Regressing by ~10x isn't a compelling argument. > Or just an installation progress bar. What's the problem? Without background downloads or updates? Every time someone wants to play your game, they're forced to stare at a progress bar that can easily take upwards of an hour depending on the game ("smaller" 3d games like subnautica push 10GB)? And you somehow don't see the problem? > I assure you the costs for a minimally successful game are minuscule when compared to the 30% cut Steam takes. And I assure you that you don't have to deploy on steam, either. You can both be a native game and get all the benefits of it and not pay anyone an app store fee! You don't have to suffer the web's treadmill of being a decade+ behind to have that.