Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
web gaming technologies, then you should get involved in the W3C Games Community Group
Access to the world's biggest audience
If anything, this is perhaps one of the most important aspects of the web as a platform for games. By
building for browser technologies, you have access to practically every web user out there—all 6.9 billion
of them! OK, perhaps not
all
of them and admittedly not every person will have an up-to-date browser. But
still, my point here is that there are an astonishing amount of people using the web, with more and more
getting connected every day. Even if we just counted Firefox users, that's hundreds of millions of people (a
lot). And Facebook users? That's well over 800 million people (more than a lot)!
How you distribute your game to all those people is another problem entirely, and one that I will touch on
briefly further on in this chapter.
What is the current state of open web games?
The past few years have seen a massive improvement in browser platforms and the adoption of
technologies required to create open web games. This is coupled with the recent increase in the quantity
of open web games that are being distributed on app stores and social networks, a number that is
increasing every day. Also, large game studios are beginning to take interest and the general quality of
these games are improving at a noticeable rate.
However, I think what has been most key in the recent improvements in open web gaming is the unease
surrounding the future of Flash on mobile and the web. What we have now with HTML5 and JavaScript is a
platform that can no longer be simply cast aside as unviable—open web games are definitely here to stay.
Game-related browser technologies already exist
What I still find most fascinating with this area of the web are the technologies that already exist and that
are arriving soon; things like the Gamepad API, Mouse Lock API, and Full Screen API, among many
others. These simple technologies are the ones that will help demolish the idea that games on the web are
small boxes played embedded within another web site. Instead, with the ability to connect gamepad
controllers and allow HTML elements to run full screen, open web games will become much more
immersive experiences, much like on consoles and the desktop.
The following are just a few examples of the technologies that are in browsers today or on their way very
soon. I encourage you to look into them all in more detail to discover how simple they are to get started
with. It's also worth mentioning that browser support for these technologies changes at a rapid pace. I
2D graphics with HTML5 canvas and SVG
Visual output is one of the core components of most games, so the ability to produce and manage 2D
graphics within a browser is very important. This is where both HTML5 canvas and scalable vector
graphics (SVG) come in.
