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I don't see WASM/WebGPU changing anything when it comes to gaming, as an industry, personally. 3d visualizations and interactive websites? Yeah definitely a nic

by jms55 3y ago

I don't see WASM/WebGPU changing anything when it comes to gaming, as an industry, personally. 3d visualizations and interactive websites? Yeah definitely a nice improvement over WebGL 2, if years late. The OP's experience with Adobe is a great example of this. WebGPU is pretty far behind what AAA games are using even as of 6 years ago. There's extra overhead and security in the WebGPU spec that AAA games do not want. Browsers do not lend themselves to downloading 300gb of assets. Additionally, indie devs aren't using Steam for the technical capabilities. It's purely about marketshare. Video games are a highly saturated market. The users are all on Steam, getting their recommendations from Steam, and buying games in Steam sales. Hence all the indie developers publish to Steam. I don't see a web browser being appealing as a platform, because there's no way for developers to advertise to users. That's also only indie games. AAA games use their own launchers, because they don't _need_ the discoverability from being on Steam. So they don't, and avoid the fees. If anything users _want_ the Steam monopoly, because they like the platform, and hate the walled garden launchers from AAA companies. EDIT: As a concrete example of the type of problem's WASM for games face, see this issue we discovered (can't unload memory after you've loaded it, meaning you can never save memory by dropping the asset data after uploading assets to the GPU, unless you load your assets in a very specific, otherwise suboptimal sequence): https://github.com/bevyengine/bevy/issues/12057#issuecomment-1960810877 https://github.com/bevyengine/bevy/issues/12057#issuecomment... (I work on high end rendering features for the Bevy game engine https://bevyengine.org https://bevyengine.org, and have extensive experience with WebGPU)

seanisom 3y ago
Lots of interesting points in there, and working on Bevy I'm sure you have much more extensive WebGPU expertise than me. I agree that the feature set around WebGPU is constrained and becoming outdated tech compared to native platforms. It shouldn't have taken this long just to get compute shaders into a browser, but here we are. The lack of programmable mesh pipelines is a barrier for a lot of games, and I know that's just the beginning. For memory, architecturally, that's why I'm treating wander as a tree of nodes, each containing Wasm functions - everything gets its own stack, and there is a strategy to manage Store sizes in wasmtime. Deleting that is the only way to free memory vs a singular application compiled to Wasm with one stack/heap/etc. More of a data-driven visualization framework than a full engine like Bevy, which I still think is one of the most elegant ways to build browser based games and 3d environments.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  It should be noted that the reason we don't have compute shaders on WebGL was Chrome team dropping the ball on them. https://github.com/9ballsyndrome/WebGL_Compute_shader/issues/9 https://github.com/9ballsyndrome/WebGL_Compute_shader/issues... https://www.khronos.org/webgl/public-mailing-list/public_webgl/2009/msg00000.php https://www.khronos.org/webgl/public-mailing-list/public_web... https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40150444 https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40150444
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
Consider also the dramatic ... ahem ... success of the attempt to launch zero-day test versions of games via essentially VNC-via-java-in-the-browser. AFAICT (I was peripherally involved with one of the companies that did this work), this really went nowhere, even though it offered "play this new game from any java-equipped browser".
pjmlp 3y ago
I fully agree with you, hence why most game studios on the Web rather use streaming from hardware where those GPU capabilities are fully available than with constrained browser APIs. WebGL and WebGPU are mostly fine for visualization and ecommerce, and that is about it. Ah, and shadertoy like demos as well, probably their biggest use case.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Terretta 3y ago
> The users are all on Steam, getting their recommendations from Steam, and buying games in Steam sales. Hence all the indie developers publish to Steam. Which is how Steam charges 30%. Devs yell at Apple because they can say Apple is overcharging because of its "monopoly", they can't blame the monopoly on Steam. With Steam, devs recognize that retailers get paid for shelf space, both as a percentage of 'retail price' the buyer pays above wholesale, and as literal payments for shelf space, inclusion in weekly mailings, posters on the windows, and more. That these models worked like this long before digital distribution, and still work like this on platforms with no technical barrier to creating competing stores, gets ignored.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Many of those devs never targeted J2ME, Symbian, Blackberry, Windows CE/PocketPC telecom operator stores, where up to 80% was normal. There are many reasons to complain, but 30% surely isn't it, as much as they make it to be.
  - talldayo 3y ago
    taps the sign It's Not The 30% Fee That Makes People Angry, Rather The Lack Of Competing Alternatives Holding Said Fee Accountable
- soulbadguy 3y ago
  > Apple is overcharging because of its "monopoly", they can't blame the monopoly on Steam. But that's the core the issue. In one case (steam) the developers pay 30% because they estimate the services they are getting from steam are worth it, in apple case the devs. pay because they have to. The problem is not with the business model or the % cut apple takes, the problem is that the business relies on monopolistic behavior. The solution would be simple, decouple IOS the platform from the app store the service. If the apple store is really worth a 30% cut the market would re converge to that price. > With Steam, devs recognize that retailers get paid for shelf space, both as a percentage of 'retail price' the buyer pays above wholesale, and as literal payments for shelf space, inclusion in weekly mailings, posters on the windows, and more. > That these models worked like this long before digital distribution, and still work like this on platforms with no technical barrier to creating competing stores, gets ignored. I would argue that digital distribution and platform are fundamentally different to brick and mortal retailers. For one, the marginal cost of an app on the store vs space on the shelves is different. My understanding was that what actually drives the cost of shelve space is competition between product manufacturer and the price setting is closer to an auction as opposed to a set price. Nobody would have an issue if all apple was doing was selling promotion/ads spot on the app store. Also apple shares on digital distribution is much larger than any single retails chain in the US. Thus giving them extreme pricing power.

by jms55 3y ago

seanisom 3y ago

Lots of interesting points in there, and working on Bevy I'm sure you have much more extensive WebGPU expertise than me. I agree that the feature set around WebGPU is constrained and becoming outdated tech compared to native platforms. It shouldn't have taken this long just to get compute shaders into a browser, but here we are. The lack of programmable mesh pipelines is a barrier for a lot of games, and I know that's just the beginning. For memory, architecturally, that's why I'm treating wander as a tree of nodes, each containing Wasm functions - everything gets its own stack, and there is a strategy to manage Store sizes in wasmtime. Deleting that is the only way to free memory vs a singular application compiled to Wasm with one stack/heap/etc. More of a data-driven visualization framework than a full engine like Bevy, which I still think is one of the most elegant ways to build browser based games and 3d environments.

pjmlp 3y ago
It should be noted that the reason we don't have compute shaders on WebGL was Chrome team dropping the ball on them. https://github.com/9ballsyndrome/WebGL_Compute_shader/issues/9 https://github.com/9ballsyndrome/WebGL_Compute_shader/issues... https://www.khronos.org/webgl/public-mailing-list/public_webgl/2009/msg00000.php https://www.khronos.org/webgl/public-mailing-list/public_web... https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40150444 https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40150444

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

Consider also the dramatic ... ahem ... success of the attempt to launch zero-day test versions of games via essentially VNC-via-java-in-the-browser. AFAICT (I was peripherally involved with one of the companies that did this work), this really went nowhere, even though it offered "play this new game from any java-equipped browser".

pjmlp 3y ago

I fully agree with you, hence why most game studios on the Web rather use streaming from hardware where those GPU capabilities are fully available than with constrained browser APIs. WebGL and WebGPU are mostly fine for visualization and ecommerce, and that is about it. Ah, and shadertoy like demos as well, probably their biggest use case.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Terretta 3y ago

> The users are all on Steam, getting their recommendations from Steam, and buying games in Steam sales. Hence all the indie developers publish to Steam. Which is how Steam charges 30%. Devs yell at Apple because they can say Apple is overcharging because of its "monopoly", they can't blame the monopoly on Steam. With Steam, devs recognize that retailers get paid for shelf space, both as a percentage of 'retail price' the buyer pays above wholesale, and as literal payments for shelf space, inclusion in weekly mailings, posters on the windows, and more. That these models worked like this long before digital distribution, and still work like this on platforms with no technical barrier to creating competing stores, gets ignored.

pjmlp 3y ago
Many of those devs never targeted J2ME, Symbian, Blackberry, Windows CE/PocketPC telecom operator stores, where up to 80% was normal. There are many reasons to complain, but 30% surely isn't it, as much as they make it to be.
- talldayo 3y ago
  taps the sign It's Not The 30% Fee That Makes People Angry, Rather The Lack Of Competing Alternatives Holding Said Fee Accountable
soulbadguy 3y ago
> Apple is overcharging because of its "monopoly", they can't blame the monopoly on Steam. But that's the core the issue. In one case (steam) the developers pay 30% because they estimate the services they are getting from steam are worth it, in apple case the devs. pay because they have to. The problem is not with the business model or the % cut apple takes, the problem is that the business relies on monopolistic behavior. The solution would be simple, decouple IOS the platform from the app store the service. If the apple store is really worth a 30% cut the market would re converge to that price. > With Steam, devs recognize that retailers get paid for shelf space, both as a percentage of 'retail price' the buyer pays above wholesale, and as literal payments for shelf space, inclusion in weekly mailings, posters on the windows, and more. > That these models worked like this long before digital distribution, and still work like this on platforms with no technical barrier to creating competing stores, gets ignored. I would argue that digital distribution and platform are fundamentally different to brick and mortal retailers. For one, the marginal cost of an app on the store vs space on the shelves is different. My understanding was that what actually drives the cost of shelve space is competition between product manufacturer and the price setting is closer to an auction as opposed to a set price. Nobody would have an issue if all apple was doing was selling promotion/ads spot on the app store. Also apple shares on digital distribution is much larger than any single retails chain in the US. Thus giving them extreme pricing power.