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I've done a fair bit of HTML5 game development for Mobile. And it's really tricky to get Mobile-first games to be fun on Desktop. All my games run on Desktop, b

I've done a fair bit of HTML5 game development for Mobile. And it's really tricky to get Mobile-first games to be fun on Desktop. All my games run on Desktop, but things like Flappy Bird just don't get much playtime on Desktop, it's popular because they're played in 'throwaway-time' on the bus, or in a bar when your friend is waiting in line to buy some drinks. A lot of mobile gaming is like that. Which is why we don't see a ton of HTML5 games on desktop. Expectations for desktop games are far higher nowadays. If you're competing with a household-gaming experience (i.e. desktop games are generally played on your home computer), we're talking about competition like World of Warcraft, League of Legends, shooters, RPGs, or indeed big budget console games. And seeing as any of these games can also run on your phone, and seeing as most gamers have phones nowadays, and seeing as your phone gives you a touch-screen experience around which the gameplay is built (e.g. swipe to throw a basket ball), you might as well play on your phone. There are some exceptions, but not many. At the end of the day though, if the mobile game runs on your phone and desktop, you'll play it on your phone. If the game has a mobile version and a desktop version, and the mobile also runs on your desktop, you'll play the desktop version instead on your desktop. Mobile games on desktop is likely a relatively small market. Of course this entire thing will shift slowly once you can run mobile games on your desktop. But it won't be a gigantic thing overnight. It's years away. And considering I fully agree with all your points (Flashlight, nav, cab, Photoshop and Notepad++ are excellent examples of the divide) I think it'll take quite a bit of time before things take a big turn. It kind of feels like the early Android tablet days. When the tablet app store offered just blown up phone apps. This is going to be that, but even more blown up, and much less finetuned to the mobile form factor. (e.g. things like swipe based UI just doesn't fly.) Of course it was clear that one day developers would build apps that'd adjust to both phones and tablets perfectly, but it took some time and it's still not quite there yet. This will be similar but I think it'll take a little longer, as it's not just a resolution-difference, but also requires developers to build multiple control systems (like swipe). The entire fat-finger vs precise-mouse driven UI/UX divide now needs to converge and it takes time. In any case, the latest announcement of touch-screen Chromebooks makes a lot more sense now.

amyjess 12y ago
> The entire fat-finger vs precise-mouse driven UI/UX divide now needs to converge and it takes time. I have to wonder if this is why Google decided to implement Pointer Events.
Touche 12y ago
Is there a good place to find good html5 desktop games (non-demos, full games)? I know they exist but I have a hard time tracking them down.
- IkmoIkmo 12y ago
  Not really for the above mentioned reasons. HTML5 desktop games barely exist. If you build a game for desktop you usually just build a native game, because trying to build World of Warcraft or GTA in a browser makes little sense. And if you do build for the browser, it's usually small-mid games where Flash is still king, despite the fact it's dying. Desktop HTML5 games are afaik 90% mobile HTML5 games that obviously also run on Desktop, but to call 'em desktop games would be too generous because they're built for crappy mobiles running Android 2.3 browsers where even playing a simple sound when you press 'start game' is a big deal because you have a few megabytes of memory to work with. A lot of these games cater to e.g. 40 year old house moms who want to play Candy Crush type games but outside of the App Stores that are marketing black boxes. Big publishers in this scene are e.g. Spil Games or BoosterMedia. For example, Zibbo is one of SpilGames' brands. You'll find mobile-first games like these: http://www.zibbo.com/game/Monsterland-Junior-vs-Senior?featured http://www.zibbo.com/game/Monsterland-Junior-vs-Senior?featu... Beyond that, there are a few developers who build cool HTML5 games usually as a way to get you to download their native app. It allows them to put these games on any desktop gaming portal, the Facebook canvas etc, and get eyeballs, and then after 5 levels say 'download the native app for more'. But even then devs often go with Flash as it's got such a huge community of developers with lots of expertise, and with Flash dying, it's cheap to hire. For example, I think Kingdom Rush, a pretty cool and fun native tower defender app on mobile had an HTML5 version in the Chrome store, basically as an extra channel to advertise their mobile app. Not completely sure though. Mozilla built BrowserQuest: http://browserquest.mozilla.org/ http://browserquest.mozilla.org/ Which was pretty cool. Not really fun, but an interesting demonstration of the tech, which is what they built it for. There's a pretty sizeable indie scene with games like these in HTML5: http://godswillbewatching.clay.io/game/godswillbewatching http://godswillbewatching.clay.io/game/godswillbewatching Again these are mostly just desktop games that got an export-to-html5 version, though. A lot of the entry level game dev tools like GameMaker or Scirra seem to have built a big HTML5 engine which allows them to offer their users an export to iOS and Android apps by wrapping them with tech like cordova, without having to mess with Objective C or Java or anything. So for a lot of indie game devs that use this type of software they can export to HTML5 as an afterthought and upload it. Don't know of big HTML5 game repos other than the mobile-first publishers (SpilGames, BoosterMedia, Keygames, Admeen, Pakap etc etc). There are some HTML5 game repos but they're full of crap. Thing with HTML5 is, it's not a user-demanded tech. It's a developer tech for people who want '1 codebase, all platforms that have a browser', i.e. TVs, phones, tablets, PCs, consoles. No user is actually interested in playing HTML5 games, it has no known benefit to them, so it's never advertised as such and so there's no real stores built around it. Sorry can't help you much more.

amyjess 12y ago

> The entire fat-finger vs precise-mouse driven UI/UX divide now needs to converge and it takes time. I have to wonder if this is why Google decided to implement Pointer Events.

Touche 12y ago

Is there a good place to find good html5 desktop games (non-demos, full games)? I know they exist but I have a hard time tracking them down.

IkmoIkmo 12y ago
Not really for the above mentioned reasons. HTML5 desktop games barely exist. If you build a game for desktop you usually just build a native game, because trying to build World of Warcraft or GTA in a browser makes little sense. And if you do build for the browser, it's usually small-mid games where Flash is still king, despite the fact it's dying. Desktop HTML5 games are afaik 90% mobile HTML5 games that obviously also run on Desktop, but to call 'em desktop games would be too generous because they're built for crappy mobiles running Android 2.3 browsers where even playing a simple sound when you press 'start game' is a big deal because you have a few megabytes of memory to work with. A lot of these games cater to e.g. 40 year old house moms who want to play Candy Crush type games but outside of the App Stores that are marketing black boxes. Big publishers in this scene are e.g. Spil Games or BoosterMedia. For example, Zibbo is one of SpilGames' brands. You'll find mobile-first games like these: http://www.zibbo.com/game/Monsterland-Junior-vs-Senior?featured http://www.zibbo.com/game/Monsterland-Junior-vs-Senior?featu... Beyond that, there are a few developers who build cool HTML5 games usually as a way to get you to download their native app. It allows them to put these games on any desktop gaming portal, the Facebook canvas etc, and get eyeballs, and then after 5 levels say 'download the native app for more'. But even then devs often go with Flash as it's got such a huge community of developers with lots of expertise, and with Flash dying, it's cheap to hire. For example, I think Kingdom Rush, a pretty cool and fun native tower defender app on mobile had an HTML5 version in the Chrome store, basically as an extra channel to advertise their mobile app. Not completely sure though. Mozilla built BrowserQuest: http://browserquest.mozilla.org/ http://browserquest.mozilla.org/ Which was pretty cool. Not really fun, but an interesting demonstration of the tech, which is what they built it for. There's a pretty sizeable indie scene with games like these in HTML5: http://godswillbewatching.clay.io/game/godswillbewatching http://godswillbewatching.clay.io/game/godswillbewatching Again these are mostly just desktop games that got an export-to-html5 version, though. A lot of the entry level game dev tools like GameMaker or Scirra seem to have built a big HTML5 engine which allows them to offer their users an export to iOS and Android apps by wrapping them with tech like cordova, without having to mess with Objective C or Java or anything. So for a lot of indie game devs that use this type of software they can export to HTML5 as an afterthought and upload it. Don't know of big HTML5 game repos other than the mobile-first publishers (SpilGames, BoosterMedia, Keygames, Admeen, Pakap etc etc). There are some HTML5 game repos but they're full of crap. Thing with HTML5 is, it's not a user-demanded tech. It's a developer tech for people who want '1 codebase, all platforms that have a browser', i.e. TVs, phones, tablets, PCs, consoles. No user is actually interested in playing HTML5 games, it has no known benefit to them, so it's never advertised as such and so there's no real stores built around it. Sorry can't help you much more.