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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 try
by 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.
- Touche 12y agoIsn't there something in between weekend-project demo games that you master in 5 minutes and AAA games with million dollar budgets? Also I disagree with this: > 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. I'm a user and I want it. The ability to play a game on any computer without installing Steam and then installing the game and then setting up a controller and etc. etc. is a huge win for users. I understand that browsers aren't ready for AAA FPS games (or at least the makers aren't ready to put the effort into html5 export) and I'm fine with that, but I think there's something in between, like a Super Meat Boy that is still a full-fledged game and can easily work in browsers. I'm just surprised that there are virtually none of these out there.
- z3t4 12y agoThat's a nice analysis! I'm also into browser games. But just started with "HTML5". The reason is that it takes time to invest in new technology. "HTML5" is bleeding edge and new features are still added. WebGL is not yet fully supported on the major browsers and Canvas just got hardware acceleration a year ago. Also Websockets got scandalized just months ago. Flash on the other hand, is mature, so it will live on at least a few more years as a lot of developers are still developing in it. I think Google deliberately slowed down "HTML5" in favor for their Android ecosystem. Witch was a stupid idea since most of their money still comes from WWW. The money is still in WWW! The the problem is that a native app runs much better then a web app on Android. Even Facebook made a native app!! With Chrome-OS and Firefox-OS on mobiles we might be able to reduce the gap between native and web on mobiles. Native is still king on desktop though and I do not think AAA-studios will develop for the web anytime soon. There are some studios (Zynga, King) making shit-loads of money from crappy web-games though, so I think we will see more in between crap and AAA on the web soon. And hopefully without plugins!!!