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Browsers — the Gaming Platform of the Future?
Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts, spoke at the recent Game Developers Conference about how he expects game platforms to evolve in the future. Hawkins thinks the role of web browsers as a platform will greatly increase as the explosion of mobile device adoption continues.
"For all of the big media companies, this phase of disruption is dramatic and happening fast. Where it's really going to lead is where the function of the browser is going. ... The browser has taken over 2 billion PCs — it's going to be taking over a billion tablets over the next few years, billions of mobile devices. It will end up in my opinion very strong on the television. The browser is the platform of the future."
If everybody in the future plans on selling micro-games with abysmal graphics, then maybe. There's really not that many situations that I can see where developing for a web browser would be more advantageous than developing a game for a native OS architecture, whether it be for a console (xbox, PS3, etc.) or computer (Mac, Windows, etc.). Even for mobile devices, if you design for a browser, what does that leave you with? Native application SDKs exist for android, iOS, and the like, which I'm sure provide better performance capabilities for rendering and whatnot than Flash or something yet-to-be-developed. That leaves ChromeOS, which I assume will use HTML5 or Flash. But, if the day it comes, it would be glorious to see Black Ops playing in a browser tab. Call me skeptical, but I just don't see this really make a dent in the hardcore-gaming market.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
Because Firefox doesn't chew enough CPU cycles now.
Yay. More Javascript and Flash.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
You don't need graphics for games. You don't even need flash. There are many persistent multiplayer games that work in real time and you just use your browser to play them. Currently I'm playing Slavehack, a hacking game where you can hack to other peoples computer and public servers, and they might hack into yours (and even steal your money from your bank account if they happen to get the bank ip and account number from the logs before you clean it and hack into it). Your computer remains online even while you're not playing, so you have to be clever. I also used to play games like Ultima Online where you build your own nation with other players and a game called Trukz, where you basically were a truck driver and it worked in real time, meaning you basically logged in few times a day to drive your truck further on its way. They all combine multiplayer in the way of companies, guilds, or player versus player gameplay.
And actually I find them really fun too. They're not going to replace traditional games, but there's room for both!
I bet Farmville has got more players and greater user loyalty than almost all other electronic games. It may be a terrible game but it's still hugely popular. It really kinda sucks because the industry has moved away from making inventive games that are full of depth toward current trend of more casual gaming.
So when will the browser and operating system achieve a seamless integration? Why do we keep thinking in terms of "browser" and "web page" for what's becoming just another storage/source of executables?
This has been attempted several times in the past (Java Launcher (?), Active Desktop, etc.). Just fuse them already; the concept of "browser" is becoming an obsolete construct, impeding semantic progress.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Why couldn't something else?
I don't see why not. It would be so easy to program a game for lots of different browsers, as they all follow the same standards. Also, there is nothing like the performance of a hardcore game running in top of another software (that runs on top of a lot of other stuff plus the OS). Who needs those hard to program console SDKs, anyway?
Yes, argue with the man who founded and ran the world's largest and most profitable gaming company until last year, who then saw his entire company put together get passed up by a single browser game, about that you don't think something that already happened is likely.
Totally reasonable.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
If everybody in the future plans on selling micro-games
Micro-games at micro-price keeps gaming interesting, so that you're not doing the same thing over and over for the 50 hours that the $50 game might last. Perhaps my taste just differs.
with abysmal graphics
I didn't think the graphics seen in the video of Tiny Wings that you linked were that abysmal; they're just stylized. Is it that you prefer the "real is brown" art style?
There's really not that many situations that I can see where developing for a web browser would be more advantageous than developing a game for a native OS architecture, whether it be for a console (xbox, PS3, etc.)
I can think of one: a developer may be too new or too small to meet Nintendo's or Sony's requirements for a license. I can provide a citation for such requirements if you wish.
Native application SDKs exist for android, iOS, and the like
Windows Phone 7, the platform that Nokia just bought into big time, doesn't have native apps; it has the .NET Compact Framework with Silverlight or XNA API. What's the big difference between Silverlight in a browser and Silverlight on Windows Phone 7?
Actually with the new tech that comes along with HTML5 it is possible to render video and audio in real time. The ability to actually build real games in browsers is here with HTML5.
Now couple that with better hardware acceleration and you get the plausibility to have games like Black Ops eventually being created for browser.
i mean how much easier is it to pirate a browser game than a properly coded one?
...will be the BROWSER!
That is to say, no. Just like they were not the OS of the future, nor the desktop of the future. They are handy, but they don't stand a chance against real client apps, for anything. Also, Java sucks.
It's always fun to talk about "what might happen" in the future.
But cmon haven't we already learned that what we think now will be made m00t by something someone invents in the near future?
Browsers gain more and more functionality as we press forward but asserting they'll be everything later with all future inventions aside seems silly.
I would agree that this is not relevant for the hard core gaming market. But most of the growth (percentage wise at least) is going to be in the casual gaming market, and there the browser can, and probably should rule.
As games like CoD move away from hard core at least towards casual, it will be interesting to see if it ever does make it to the browser. I suspect by the time it does the hard core crowd will have moved on to something else.
Umm: http://www.quakelive.com/
The kind of game you can put in a browser is not the kind of game you are used to. Browser games are like Angry Birds; toys, not serious games. You get a few minutes of enjoyment that can be had at any time you want. But if you want a lengthy game with decent graphics, like say, Fallout, or Civilization, or Empire Earth, or Sims, then no, those are not going into a browser. The thing is, nobody is making those kinds of games any more. Fallout 3 was the last one as far as I'm concerned. From now on it's just mindless toys for mindless enjoyment.
Not going to happen as long as the sound and input APIs completely suck.
Seriously, every time a new gadget comes out, people are raving about how it will replace everything, only to be thrown to the wind a year later.
Stop trying to make such silly projections.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
micro-games with abysmal graphics
Webgl is real and works today in the latest browsers. Go here (with Chrome 9 or FF4 and a real GPU) to see it right now.
developing for a web browser would [not] be more advantageous
In terms of performance, browsers already provide an environment that has parity with the best stand-alone dynamic languages. Both HTML5 canvas and Webgl are sufficient to solve the rendering problem for a broad class of games. These tools are standards based and free. If you've ever earned a living making games you can't miss the potential.
Large investments into browser development are coming from several competing organizations. Don't be surprised if browsers become superior to traditional techniques.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Wasn't it this guy that said the 3DO was the future of gaming and basically the be all end all and what not?
Umm.. Onlive Games (Onlive.com) anyone? Technically, since the graphics rendering is done remotely, you don't need more than a browser to play games through that service. Ughh.. I don't know how to embed a url
There's really not that many situations that I can see where developing for a web browser would be more advantageous than developing a game for a native OS architecture, whether it be for a console (xbox, PS3, etc.) or computer (Mac, Windows, etc.). Even for mobile devices, if you design for a browser, what does that leave you with?
The value of video games is 1% technology and 99% game design.
The actual graphics in a game is much like the box art and advertising; it gets people to buy the game, try the game, and discover if it actually is a decent game. They don't improve the gameplay any more than Tony the Tiger makes Frosted Flakes taste better. They do, however, let games compete for shelf space alongside other games with decent graphics.
Successful browser games are the best thing to happen for gamers since games moved from the arcade to the home in the early 80s. They lower the barrier to entry and increase the amount of risk developers can take. We can get new genres, new mechanics, new designs...new everything. Publishers aren't going to take risks with $30 million development pricetags. All the fancy graphics/physics/art/music/voice/etc ever did for us is lock us into seeing the same shit every year.
Imagine taking the entire development budget of EA Sports NFL $year and making a thousand "crappy flash games" instead. You'd end up with a whole lot of shit and a handful of real gems...games that will be played 20 years from now, unlike the nth iteration of the same expensive low-risk crap.
This is far too appropriate: http://xkcd.com/484/
No. I'm sorry. Even if WebGL becomes as fast as native OpenGL (a laughable notion) then JavaScript will never, not in 20 years, power a game like Black Ops short of running on a distributed supercomputer. Native Client is the only real hope of achieving something like that (not currently ofc).
Either we see better plugins (NaCl) or 3D games become prerendered on server farms and the browser only handles input.
Or, even better, check out Quake II with multiplayer support completely done in html5 and javascript.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
Quake Live actually runs through a plugin.
Quite frankly, he has no idea how much of a business gaming is, and I predict that we'll be seeing a lot of HTML5 and HTML6 versions of browser gaming apps, especially as tablets dominate the home and business market.
Yes, that includes WOW.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
We've heard this refrain before, I believe it was almost ten years ago and the fact of the matter is it just hasn't come true. Sure, we use our browsers to access social media, broadcast media, news and information sites, but it's certainly not the only thing we do with our computers. Will we see an even more dumbed-down device that runs just a browser as its OS? Sure. Will it sell as well as, say, an iPad? Probably not.
Now, I may not have founded Electronic Arts, but my opinion is also based on facts and is just as valid a prediction of the future as anyone who has worked and lived technology for more than 20 years. We can point to technologies we believe will revolutionize or evolve to take over, but what plays out in the market is usually a completely different thing. Let's just wait and see what happens. I like surprises.
What's abysmal about the graphics in the game you link to?
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
Considering that as you say a single browser game passed EA the entire company last year and he is saying browsers are the platform of the future. I see no problem with someone questioning him as he seems more reactive that insightful about the 'future'.
Google already ported Quake 2 to WebGL, here's an example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSDiBA27Wo0. IMHO that's powerful enough for most casual gamers and that is something that exists and is working *today*. Hawkins was talking about "in the future."
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Doesn't that count as a successful browser-based game?
Go here (with Chrome 9 or FF4 and a real GPU)
I tried that, and https to self-signed sites stopped working. (Perspectives isn't yet ported to Chrome or Fx4.) And the majority of PCs sold even in 2011 don't come with real GPUs, unlike video game consoles all of which come with a real GPU. Instead they have Intel's Graphics My A**, which is optimized for rendering a bunch of essentially big sprites in a window system. Sprites have far lower geometry requirements than a 3D game might have.
In terms of performance, browsers already provide an environment that has parity with the best stand-alone dynamic languages.
Sure, JavaScript competes with Python, but that doesn't mean it competes with bytecode-compiled languages using a static type system such as Java and C#.
Until the browser supports input devices other than mouse/keyboard/finger, I don't see this becoming a reality.
It would be so easy to program a game for lots of different browsers, as they all follow the same standards.
Two major web browser platforms, Gecko and WebKit, indeed follow the same standards. Users of Internet Explorer on Windows can install a WebKit plug-in called Google Chrome Frame that will automatically switch rendering to Chrome for those sites that opt-in.
Who needs those hard to program console SDKs, anyway?
Say you have a set-top box with a web browser. It's likely to be WebKit based, just like the browsers in iOS and Android. Now how do you get it to use more than one remote control so that your mates visiting your place can play with you without having to bring laptops to LAN up?
both firefox and chrome having hardware 3d acceleration, i don't think it's that big of a stretch to guess that quite complex 3d browser based games will be popular in a few years
This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
i mean how much easier is it to pirate a browser game than a properly coded one?
Infringing copyright in the client side of a browser game may be easy. Infringing copyright in the server side should be much more difficult because the server code isn't even published.
In case you're still in the dark about browser-based games, here's Interstellar Marines.
http://www.interstellarmarines.com/
The graphics are pretty darn good for a browser-based First Person Shooter. I'm looking forward to seeing how multiplayer will be. For now, the shoothouse-type scenarios are pretty fun, even if it is only against bots.
What else can happen when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object?
If you're saying .NET is not a native framework then I'd also argue that Android's java/dalvik framework is not native either.
You're correct: Dalvik uses a JIT, and it used to even use an interpreter. But Android at least has NDK, which allows writing much of the program in standard C++, compiling that to ARM machine code, and then connecting that to a front-end using the Java/Dalvik framework. This can prove convenient if your program is ported from another platform, and its model is written in C++. Windows Phone 7 and Xbox Live Indie Games, on the other hand, lack anything comparable to NDK or NaCl; they run only IL which must 1. be verifiably type-safe and 2. not use Reflection.Emit. This in practice means C# or C++/CLI, and if you want, I'll explain how the verifiably type-safe subset of C++/CLI is C++ in name only.
Gamers and game developers are constantly pushing for more and better - better graphics, more realistic physics, better AI. All of which requires increasing amounts of memory and processing power. Running games within a web browser will impose unnecessary resource bottlenecks on the game and affect the gaming experience. Because of this I don't think web browsers will become any more of a gaming platform than they already are now. I do believe the market size for browser based games will increase but there will still be a market for large scale games with cutting edge graphics and technology that cannot be run from within a web browser.
since It's worked so well for business applications. I've seen so many users just weep for joy at the radical upgrades in usability.
Impressive. Welcome to 14 years ago! Plus, that's on PC - I'd imagine having that running in a browser on a mobile phone would look, well, utter shite.
I haven't seen a single web-based app that I thought was impressive. I can spot Phonegap style crap all over the iPhone store and Android market. So can other people judging by the abysmal reviews of them. People WANT native apps that work fluidly, and adopt the styling of the native interface - not some shocking webpage+javascript abortion sucking the life out of the battery as it stutters along.
Abysmal graphics? Heard of QuakeLive, running in a web browser on PC, Mac and (gasp) Linux! If I had a mouse with me right now I'd be playing it as I sit on the train to work... not sure the guy next to me would like it though ;)
... wait, what?
I don't know what else to assume other than that you couldn't possibly have been relating Quake 2 to CoD: Black Ops. What you see there is essentially the current pinnacle of JS/WebGL and it's not going to improve dramatically for computationally-heavy games.
By your logic only an insane person would have questioned a statement made in the 70's that leisure suits were the fashion of the future.
Trends come and go. Comparing a recent jump in numbers isn't all that useful for determining the long term viability of a medium.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
With some large additional download they are going to be games like http://probablyinteractive.com/url-hunter
...with abysmal graphics...
Honestly many of the best games I have ever played had no graphics or old style graphics at best. To often modern day games substitute content for beauty. In the end beauty only goes so far.
This is just an opinion and should be treated as such, odds are yours is different.
--- When you start with the conclusion that you want, then throw out any facts that don't agree, is it true?
Yea, I'd rather play a full feature game that interacts with the native APIs directly, not through some virtual machine layer equivalent that'd just be wasting much needed resources.
They want their Wild Tangent spyin I MEAN Gaming browser plugin back.
For example, Elite Command is a highly graphical multiplayer browser-based game, and it doesn't use any fancy HTML5 features:
http://elitecommand.net/
No flash, no HTML5. Just regular old HTML, CSS, and JavaScript (DHTML, as they used to call it).
Disclaimer: I developed Elite Command.
I'm part of an EA closed beta and while I won't say the name of the title due to NDA agreements, I would like to say that the browser idea sucks pretty much. What they did in the title I'm trying is develop a plugin for Firefox, Chrome and IE. That plugin in turn, launches a .NET Updater application and a lobby interface in separate executables that are awfully slow, full of simple issues and severe load times. One would think that programming with .NET wouldn't be that hard but then again, once the fullscreen application launches, it looks and feels like a regular PC game since that's what it is in the end, a DirectX C++ application.They are still working out the issues on the server side, that is causing severe lag across all realms, but even if most of the bugs are ironed out, I see the future of this kind of gaming, making your experience slow as hell.
Yes, it uses the unity web player plug in, but you play it in your browser. So it's not a pure "html" game, but yet it's played in your browser. Graphics are on par with about 10 years ago on a regular desktop PC or console. At least at the lower graphics settings I use since this is an older machine. When I did have the settings up things looked pretty good.
To me it was amazing to see what could be done in a browser these days.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
made me throw up in my mouth.
Check out The Lacuna Expanse, a browser, iPhone, and iPad game that doesn't at all feel like a browser game.
And with savegames stored online instead of locally on cookies, you can keep playing both at home and at wor....
It's a horrible, horrible idea.
hey're not going to replace traditional games, but there's room for both!
Of course there is - the combination of
is a sure-fire recipe for thousands of little games that you play for a few minutes before leaving it forever. Which isn't a problem for me - someone else will be along in a minute.
This shameless plug, for example, took me a full working day to write. Bear in mind that the last time I used javascript for anything other than menu mouse-overs was in 1999/2000. Fair enough, one feature still remains to be implemented (and I may even do that one day :-)), but if I attempted the same thing using some other platform (other than http/javascript), then:
Fair enough, I won't be able to write Far Cry at all in current browser platforms, but I wasn't going to devote a year of dev to a game, anyway
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
That leaves ChromeOS, which I assume will use HTML5 or Flash. ... Google have Native Client which addresses these issues. http://www.geek.com/articles/games/google-shows-off-quake-clone-running-in-native-client-20100513/
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
>> check out Quake II with multiplayer support [youtube.com] completely done in html5 and javascript.
Completely done in html5 and javascript... Except it isn't. This won't run in a stock browser, it needs custom plugins.
I looked into programming an FPS game in a browser myself, and ran into multiple issues. For one, you can't capture the mouse. This means you can't have traditional FPS-style mouse control. The networking is also an issue. You can't just do regular TCP/IP. There's websockets, which I'm not sure if they're standardized and uniform yet, but can apparently only connect to the web server. Then there's the sound. Do you have any idea how buggy and pathetic the implementation of the audio tag is in both firefox and chrome right now? It's terrible.
I'd like for browsers to become a better gaming platform too, but right now, JavaScript and HTML5 are being standardized by people who don't really seem to truly understand (or care about) the full potential of the browser as a game platform. Hopefully they will lighten up at some point, or browser vendors will provide suitable extensions. I'm sure browser games will gain in popularity no matter what. Lots of people are already addicted to mafia wars and all those games you find on facebook. For the browser to one day replace consoles as a gaming platform though, that would take a more targeted effort by browser vendors, in my opinion.
The technology is important at the extremes, where it's either an enabler/barrier or a multiplier/divisor. And those modifiers apply to both what the developers can do (and how much pain and money it costs them), and what the game allows the players to do.
The tech matters less when you already have "enough" to do what you want - above that, it isn't getting you anything. But it's really hard to ever say "we already have enough of everything, stop here," because we don't know what new gameplay might be prohibitive to build now but viable with more hardware. For example, it takes a surprising amount of power to roll that Katamari; it could be done on the last generation's hardware (PS2, PSP), but couldn't have been done on the generation before (original playstation, N64) - even though visually it looks simple to us.
What people are applauding about browser games is that they lowered the barrier for making and distributing the bottom end of game complexity. What people are bitching about browser games is that the path to expanding that further is hard. Borrowing from my earlier example, I'm not sure it's viable yet to roll the Katamari in the average browser running on the average system - even though the average system itself could probably run a dedicated on-the-bare-metal version. Game developers are annoyed by limitations like that.
I expect that it'll be resolved by continuing to virtualize the internals of the browser. Web APIs that safely expose more system resources without having to drill through as many layers of system complexity to get at them. That makes the easy-to-make games even easier, as well as making more complicated games viable. The same logic applies to web applications in general, of course, not only games.
You obviously dont have a clue where the development is heading, with webgl and the html5 canvas you have a pretty powerful tool at hands to deliver a good gaming experience in a browser.
Also constant connections for multiplayer gaming is no problem anymore thanks to websockets.
WebCL is in the works as well.