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Game Devs Predict Death of Flash, Installed Games
New submitter rescendent writes "In an interview with Massively, Illyriad Games developers Ben Adams and James Niesewand predict the death of Flash, the rise of HTML5, and a long-term shift away from installed games. Quoting: 'The major advantages that boxed set or download games have had over browser-based games are local storage and direct access to the graphics and audio engines. Those barriers are being smashed apart by HTML5. ... Especially for MMO game developers, I personally don't believe that developers have any real long-term choice about embarking on this path or not. Ultimately, I believe it's either browser-based or obsolescence. If you don't do it, your competitors will, and they'll be making games that work identically on more device platforms, on more browsers, on more operating systems. It's going to take a very long time to get there, though, but this change has begun now, and we firmly believe that HTML5 is the future.' With Microsoft joining the ranks of Apple and not supporting Flash in Windows 8, there's definitely a risk to Flash. But will browser-based games really replace installed games?"
Microsoft has said that Windows 8 will support Flash, it will just be disabled if you view a page in the Metro UI. I can't imagine many people doing that beyond on a tablet like it is intended for.
Internet on the customer side needs to be several magnitutes faster to accomodate the same graphic fidelity
Portal 3 will run in my browser, or will be obsolete?
But for html5 replacing flash in these parts we do need DOM-Bindings for Bytecode now more than ever. It would be so great to write code in a language of my choice and compile it to Browser-Bytecode with DOM-Bindings. This would make it possible to deliver more proprietary code without making browser-plugins or something similar.
Especially for MMO game developers
About that part, yeah fair enough. And Flash games can't die soon enough. But that is one thing and another thing is to predict the death of "Installed Games". Look at the HTML5 version of Quake II - on an Atom netbook you get something like, 6fps? While the native runs smoothly on a 100 Mhz machine.
The barriers aren't being 'smashed apart'. They're being lowered, gradually. There's still a massive difference between games written in Javascript/WebGL and C++/OpenGL. It isn't even comparable yet.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
...have people already forgotten that they have pretty much NEVER led the development of anything in terms of web browsers?
So IE8 won't support flash. So? That's like saying 'Disney won't support (random new movie format)'. Sounds impressive, unless you actually know that they've never led tech development...ever.
In the history of web clients, MS has constantly dragged their feet and been a reluctant clumsy participant, adopting technology and systems well after everyone else has done so, and then doing it poorly for at least a few iterations.
It ultimately depends if the porn industry accepts that html5 is more advantageous for them, or if flash works well enough. If porn is delivered by flash, flash will live on.
-Styopa
Sorry, but you're not going to be able to replicate World of Warcraft in Javascript. It's not happening. Ever. The language just isn't built to do something that huge without collapsing under its own poor design decisions... not to mention minor details like needing to stream and locally cache several GB of textures and audio files.
This only flies if you believe the future of "gaming" is what Flash games currently are: small, simple time wasters. For anything that's currently considered an AAA game, the idea that this stuff will replace it is a joke.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
The idea of HTML5 and presumably Javascript replacing C, C++, Python, Perl, LUA, BASIC and all the other languages used to code games is ambitious. As is the idea that I will be content with my browser middle-manning all the code - have you seen how slow Firefox and Chrome can be rendering things, even on excellent hardware? Additionally, since many PC games are (unfortunately) console ports, will this mean that my console will just be an oversized browser? Doubtful.
Yes, maybe with time and a huge paradigm shift, this could happen. But frankly, people keep saying that the era of hard-media (discs, carts) games is ending, yet I still see shops like Game, GameStop, etc making a profit. This smacks to me of that. Whilst some MMOs could use this model (mostly crappy free-to-play in-game purchase models) I don't see the guys at Crytek making this swap anytime soon. Maybe in time for HTML8...
Zuki: Technical Tomfoolery
...but we only have 14 hours to save the earth!
Seriously. This isn't news, it's a repost of someone else's slow news day.
... the nuclear bombs have become obsolete. Wars will be solved in flyswatter duels in a matter of minutes, with minimal costs!
... it's highly likely the bandwidth will be the constraining factor. Not only that but much of the world doesn't have a lot of bandwidth. These predictions keep forgetting about billions of middle class and poor in other countries besides the west.
...is there is no portability.
While this is good from a developers point of view, customers hate it, it is going to be a new age of hate, just as much as DRM.
And when that site of choice dies, bye-bye games.
Also the lack of binary storage in JS isn't exactly helping. Closest you'll get is that absolute mess that is base64, adding a 33% increase in size to files on average if I remember correct.
While you can store images and use those as storage, that means less portable as you now have at least 2 files. (3 if you count the initial HTML file to open it)
You also can't modify said storage method if you use the image. (yet)
Files API is pretty much non-existent yet. Just a draft last I checked.
No hardware support yet. This is still probably a decade away from being solid. So no cameras, no mics, no joysticks, nothing.
I hate Flash, but HTML5, hell, HTML6, will probably still be behind in what it can do. Wanna know why? Because Adobe GET THINGS DONE, unlike that awful excuse that is W3C group.
I've heard crap excuses like "oh we need to run millions of test cases" and other nonsense before.
If they are taking that long to run millions of test cases, makes me wonder what sort of crap-tier computer they are using. It is like someone lifted W3C straight out of the 80s.
Until we either get rid of W3C group, or expand / improve / upgrade / get rid of every current member / anything it, Adobe will always be a step ahead.
W3C will make damn sure that this future won't happen any time soon.
The, ahem... "Online Entertainment" industry has a huge investment in Flash video content. It's not just that all those films would have to be reencoded to HTML5 or some other format that Metro Explorer supplorts, but that the site operators would have to purchase new video compression tools that output HTML5.
Their disk space requirements would double as well, because for five or ten years there will be many users that cannot view HTML5 content, so those people will still be using Flash. Jeezus H-Bar Christ, my Apache logs tell me I still get lots of visitors that use Netscape 4!
Maybe I'm a little prejudiced, (I'm a game dev working on a more traditional MMO right now), but our customers still seem to be interested high-fidelity worlds, complete with rich graphics and audio. People have been shouting about how the thin client is the future for a decade or more now, and it simply never happens. There's still something to be said for the ability to create high-performance applications that can be run directly on the user's machine, in native code. We do incredibly demanding things, and the fact of the matter is that until we literally have more performance than we know what to do with, native binaries will always have a huge advantage when it comes to manipulating and displaying high-fidelity virtual worlds.
Naturally, there are plenty of opportunities in more specialized, smaller, niche markets, but to say everything is going that direction is a bit far-fetched. Granted, we're not oblivious to this direction, as we have a small team working on a lot of web-based and mobile integration initiatives, but I really hate when people are so quick to come to some sort of "all or nothing" conclusion about any new emerging market or technology.
Will HTML5 eventually kill Flash? Probably, if there is really good tool support. It it going to be the be-all and end-all for future MMOs? Yes and no... there will certainly be a move there, especially among games with lighter requirements, but big-budget native clients are going to be with us for quite a while still.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
So, what, he expects to load gigabytes of resources like sounds and textues and video in realtime from the internet? If he doesn't, and he expects that to reside on disk in some HTML5 based storage, how is that not installation? What a fucking idiot...
Move sig!
I'd love to see how they handle streaming gigs worth of game data over a browser every single time every single person wants to play a game.
Ideally, it'd be done with an application cache that keeps the gigabytes of data on the device. But the spec leaves quota expectations undefined, and real-world devices have been seen to have maximum cache sizes such as 0.005 GB that would be impractically small for this use.
Seriously, I've never heard of these guys. Looking in to it, they've created an HTML 5 game. Ok, wonderful, but two things about that:
1) Making one game does not make you an expert. They've managed to make a single (presumably successful) game. Ok, fine. I can point to thousands of successful non-HTML 5 games. If EA was saying this, I'd maybe give it some credit, but these guys have shown that you can make a game in HTML 5 (which we already knew) not that everything is going that way.
2) They may have some bias, given that their one and only game is HTML 5. They think they've found the One True Way(tm) and perhaps are a little blinded by that.
Personally I think they are dead wrong. Installed games are going to remain popular in part because people might like to be able to play a game when the Internet goes out or is unavailable, and let's please not pretend like that never happens. Also there is an issue of game resources. I happen to like games with cool graphics and sound. However those games often seem to need 5-20GB to pull that off. You propose to do that in HTML 5?
This is all ignoring the performance issue.
I'm sure we'll continue to see plenty of web games. We saw them back before HTML 5, it'll only help things. However I don't think everything will move that way. You might notice that no game technology has killed off the old ones. Handhelds didn't kill consoles, phones didn't kill handhelds, casual games didn't kill involved ones, and so on. Different games for different markets.
predict the death of Flash, the rise of HTML5, and a long-term shift away from installed games
Death of Flash, and rise of HTML5? Flash was already an order of magnitude faster than HTML5 in some cases, and they claim it's more than another order of magnitude faster now. Flash is a single platform, HTML5 is a whole bunch of browsers, each of which is free to render differently. Flash runs places where you'd have trouble running Firefox (you can run a stand alone player.) Need I go on?
and a long-term shift away from installed games
How long-term? We don't have the bandwidth for everyone to use OnLive all the time, and even if we did, it's an inferior experience. Or do you just mean games that don't require install? That's not happening until games are distributed on solid state media.
Did not RTFA. Will not.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...and why the fuck do their predictions matter in the least?
Secondly: javascript has nowhere near the performance needed for anything but games with simple mechanics. You simply cannot afford the overhead of js when dealing with thousands of entities with AI at 60 frames per second. Either stuttering or excessive battery draining will happen.
As always, variety is good, and it is obvious that HTML5/js will be a good fit for many games. Many others will still require *at least* flash, silverlight (silverlight 5 will integrate XNA and may work on OS X, very interesting for a game dev), or even C/C++.
The last question is why does a new technology always seems to imply that alternatives will automatically shrink? The world is not a zero sum game, and we constantly *expand* our horizons...
My book: Friendly F#, fun with game development and XNA; my game: Galaxy Wars by VSTeam; my gamedev language: Casanova.
so...are they intentionally being morons? or was it accidental?
first, windows 8 WILL support flash, secondly HTML5 etc still is NOWHERE NEAR good enough to replace flash completely, and finally i guess they're assuming that everyone will immediately upgrade to win8 ? That's why IE6 doesn't exists any more right? Never mind the amount of people still on crappy connections.
This whole article smells like SEO bait...."hey let's write ANOTHER bullshit article saying how flash is gonna die soon and put windows 8 keywords in there too...oh and mention apple..."
The major advantage of an installed game that is not defective by design is that you can play it without a fucking internet connection.
Okay, so two guys who've developed a browser-based game that's non-graphically intensive extrapolate their experiences to the rest of the gaming world? Uhhh, yeah.
Y'know Soulskill, just because someone's said something doesn't mean you need to grant them a platform. As much as I despised Taco's unprofessionalism, I really do miss his leadership of this site.
So, an HTML5 developer that nobody's ever heard of thinks HTML5 is the way to go and not Flash and certainly not the installed games that are making Steam so successful because everybody just loves those "free to play" games and is flocking to them and abandoning games you have to pay for. Do I have that about right?
This is big news.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If you write a browser based HTML5 game then there is nothing you can do, it's open source. All your content, code, everything is available to anyone and everyone.
I just can't see how that model can survive. If you write a popular game there will be 50 Chinese clones popping up within days.
What is Netcraft saying on this issue?
You can't handle the truth.
If Adobe would have gotten their heads out of their A.$$ and provided more support for other platforms then flash would still have a future. It started with lousy support on the IBooks powerpc, then Android, and Adobe doesn't make it easy to turn off Flash in your browser so it doesn't overpower everything. This is what happens when companies put things on hold and others fill those voids, Netflix is another good example.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Does HTML5 use OpenGL? or does it have it's own graphics language that talks to the underlying stuff in the OS like OpenGL and DirectX?
IF OpenGL is being used directly within the browser this could be a BIG thing. Most developers use Direct3D and I would imagine Microsoft might be pushing silverlight because they don't want to undermine something they've worked very hard to standardize and control.
It's more of a reasonable proposition than it ever has been in the past. For one thing people really like angry birds and those sorts of casual games and for another developers insist upon granting the browser more and more access to hardware.
Even though it's a mistake, it does appear to be happening, the question is really how advanced are the games going to be. I wouldn't have expected games like FreeCiv to end up in the browser.
Yeah, tell ID to make RAGE work in flash with no 25gb installation. See how hard you get laughed out the door.
Human desire is to collect and save the things we treasure or enjoy. For gamers who enjoyed 'whatever' back in the Windows 3.x/95/98 days, they may not be able to play those again but they still keep their old disks somewhere. People like to have the things they buy in their hands.
For publishers, this means they can't easily make people pay for the same thing over and over and over again which is, of course, their goal in all of this. I think the practice should simply be illegal as the meaning and purpose of copyrights and licenses and various agreements are getting twisted and abusive. I know I find myself being more than a little annoyed by it.
This idea that somehow there'll be a magical technology that will allow for super fast wireless everywhere has no real foundation in reality. The reason is that pesky thing, Shannon's law: C = B * log2 (1+ S/N). What the means is the total bits per second you are going to get C, is dependent on the bandwidth in hertz, B, of the channel and it's signal-to-noise ratio, S/N. To get more data you have to either increase SNR or increase bandwidth.
Well, in a wired world, this isn't that hard to do. Just increase the frequency. Ultimately going optical does a great job. When you are talking light waves which are in the hundreds of terahertz, well getting a channel that is a THz wide is perfectly possible. Even SNR can be improved to an extent, if needed, with better shielding, more power, and so on. What's more, every wire (or fiber) is its own, dedicated, channel. So a wire going to you and one going to me share nothing. We each get all the bandwidth.
Not so in the world of wireless. There are hard limits on SNR because of ambient noise, and limits on transmission power and that whole inverse square law. You can't very well have mobile devices with 1000 watt transmitters, not if you want things on battery, never mind the other problems.
Bandwidth is perhaps even a bigger problem. The thing is, different frequency ranges have different properties. Something like 60GHz might sound great for having a wide channel, but it gets attenuated by air, never mind walls. The low frequencies punch through better, but you end up with a more narrow channel. If you are operating in the 700MHz range you aren't having a 1GHz channel.
Then of course everyone in a given area has to share the bandwidth. Whatever you have available on a channel, everyone using it shares it. 100mbps doesn't sound so impressive if 50 people are all sharing it.
These things are why the latest and greatest Wireless N struggles to push 200mbps effective data rate, single duplex, under the best conditions yet gigabit ethernet is cheap as hell and has been available for around 2 decades.
Whatever we can do with wires, wireless will always be much slower. As a practical matter, long(ish) range wireless like LTE and so on are never going to be all that blazingly fast, particularly when everyone is using them heavily. Building out networks and cutting down segment size helps, as do new technologies, but you aren't going to see wireless in the same arena as wired.
Currently we are heading towards the typical media format wars. Services will fight to have you sign up to their walled garden, they will want you to buy games that they keep or rent their service so you do not actually own anything.
There is a problem with the current model, games are run remotely, on a remote server. this causes lag and bandwidth limits.
The limiting factors are input lag and bandwidth.
Games are all heading to FullHD graphics if they are not already there, some will support higher resolutions and 3D, but let's set the target for 1080p standard for the next few years.
Currently, to stream good quality, compressed FullHD 1080p you need about 20mbps. So basically 2.5MB/sec. currently most ISPs cannot provide this sort of sustained bandwidth and there aren't that many people with these types of home connections.
Input lag, your local machine is responsive to your input devices, eg. mouse, keyboard. If you ever played an online game you'd know this typically does not change online.
The only solution (I can see) is to do/invent a way to do complete offloading to the local machine. So this means the game media will download to you computer or "stream" and play it locally.
Bandwidth will eventually catch up and 20mb will become standard in the coming years. Input lag will not exist if we're offloading to the local machine via browser.
Once again though, what will we have? a company owning the media needed to play and renting it out as a service. If you online connection fails, if you do not wish to be tracked. If the very idea of your gaming statistics being used for research etc. you'd not want to use this service.
You will have to pay a monthly fee to play X amount of games that company Y or Z provide, they will have your identity details, credit card and will not be liable if your internet connection drops out etc etc.
So now we come full circle, this remote gaming idea is nice, I'm sure it could work but how is it better than the current method for the CUSTOMER>?
This is the answer the games company need to create. A reason why this new service is better. How is it better than storing 100 ISO images on a local drive and playing games? if hardware differs, saves games , player preferences, settings etc, how will a game streaming service not need to install anything?
I don’t care if some no-names predict the future technology of an industry. Use a forum to post an opinion, not a news site.
I play a lot of Flash games, but I wouldn't pay money for them. If you buy the Premium Edition of games, you still have to connect to their servers to play, so you can only play as long as they keep supporting it. If you move to some device that doesn't support Flash, you can't easily run it in an emulator. I contrast, I have a lot of old games that I still play in DOSBox or WINE, and I've bought quite a few games from gog.com recently, because I know I can dig them out again in the future if I'm bored.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You can install another browser that does support plug-ins
No, Microsoft can install another browser on your device through the Metro app store and has every right to decline to do so, just as Apple has declined to approve browsers that run on an iOS device other than its own Safari. Did you miss the recent story that all Metro style applications must be digitally signed by Microsoft?
If the browser can do pretty much everything the OS can do, why not simply design everything for the browser, and leave the headache of interfacing properly with each OS to the browser developers?
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
An installation happens manually at the user's request and generally proceeds to completion before the program can start for the first time. In addition, an installation often requires the user to elevate to administrative privileges before proceeding. A cache happens automatically, can be filled gradually, and is generally separate for each user. The "installations" of Metal Gear Solid 4 and other PlayStation 3 games blur this line perhaps.
Am I getting old, or does no-one like to play offline or prefer not be constrained by network speeds any more?
I've been doing Rich Client Development for the last 11 years, been in the front line of Flash Development and the development with other rich client solutions including the newest Ajax + HTML5 + CSS3 fray and have worked on and with some of the most ambitions Browsergame Projects on the Planet. And I agree, Rich Client has a lot going for it these days, especially with all the mobile and tablet stuff and them 10 bazillion plattforms all over the place like it's the 80ies all over again.
But predicting the end of Non-Browser Games is just plain non-sense. Even my Nintendo DSi with Professor Layton in it right now - a Game that would be laughably easy to port to a Browser, even for a mobile device - will tell you this is bullshit.
Bottom line: These guys are just dickwaving because they managed to actually finish a neat BG and they now feel like the king of the hill because their signups are up and the micropayments cash is rolling in. Meanwhile Crylabs is building their next release that will come on a disk, cost 50€ and will be yet another big hit.
Nothing to see here, move along.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Quoting: 'The major advantages that boxed set or download games have had over browser-based games are local storage and direct access to the graphics and audio engines. Those barriers are being smashed apart by HTML5. ... Especially for MMO game developers
I agree with the comment on the advantages, and think those advantages aren't going to go away until really fast internet is available cheaply. Until then, doing everything in the cloud and pushing reams of data over wire is a serious limitation to broader acceptance.
What I do see is a shift in how games are played - which is moving to a very different way of developing the gaming experience. Gaming initially was a solitary experience - everything you needed was contained in a box and you played when and where you wanted. As the method of playing began to change to more tram and multiplayer games how the gaming experience was delivered began to change. That change is still underway, and is driving the move to browser-based games Because that technology can deliver the desired experience in a satisfying manner. It's not the technology, but the gaming experience, that is driving the change. technology may limit the speed of the change; but it is not driving the change. If gamers did not move to more multi-player games the technological advances would have no impact on gaming.
You could argue that without the technological advances the gaming experience wouldn't change, which is true; but without the demand of rteh new experience technology alone would not bring it about. There is a reason people still play cards and chess in person - it delivers the desired experience even if it is centuries old technology.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Nuff said.
Extra, extra!!
HTML programmer thinks web programming is the future and download games are doomed!!
Read All About it on Slashdot!!
Also scientist discover water is wet, fish could swim and birds could fly!!, everything in the interior comments!
I predict that future gaming will be all based on posting comments to /. since it gives the perfect mix of casual and hardcore, without the hardware requirements that most can no longer afford. Please submit my learned prediction as a story to a rubbish news site.
A major advantage of non-browser games is that they don't require an internet connection and with always-on DRM this barrier is, in fact, disappearing.
Games have become increasingly data hungry. The World of Warcraft install uses 33.2gb of data on my hard drive. That includes cut scenes, voice acting, images of items thousands of 3D models, character profiles, NPC AI code, storylines, and tons of epic features. With that in mind, I've seen browser based games that are fully 3D. One written in Java that has impressive graphics, but it is no where near the quality of World of Warcraft. These Game Devs are being as stupid as Steve Jobs. Flash will remain as long as HTML5 lacks features that developers need, which if you compare the list of features side by side, Flash not only kills HTML5, it destroys it. Game installs will continue also as long was we have epic games with involved storylines, voice acting, complex AI, and loads of other features.
These Game Devs should really think through what they are saying.
Game Devs Predict Death of Flash, Installed Games, meanwhile ISPs introduce bandwidth caps, usage limits, per-MB pricing dashing the game devs hopes.
Yea, you're going to run streaming video @ 1920x1080 and up, with surround sound and 0 latency for an MMO that addicts are going to play for 12hrs+ per day and the ISPs are just going to roll over and take it... I think not.
Anyone who spends 500 Wii points ($5) for the Opera Wii browser
I thought Nintendo made Internet Channel freeware to all Wii Shop Channel users. For a while, it was 500 Nintendo Points, but Nintendo gave people who had bought it during that time a coupon for a free 500-point NES game.
The HTML5 stuff? You'll be lucky if it even loads.
If you stick to things that worked in Opera 9, it'll work on Internet Channel.
how is that not installation?
Please see replies to mhajicek's post asking the same question.
The, ahem... "Online Entertainment" industry has a huge investment in Flash video content. It's not just that all those films would have to be reencoded to HTML5 or some other format that Metro Explorer supplorts, but that the site operators would have to purchase new video compression tools that output HTML5.
They'd only have to buy reencoding tools if they had been using Sorenson Spark (H.263) in FLV files for Flash Player 6 and 7 or TrueMotion VP6 in FLV files for Flash Player 8. If they had been authoring for Flash Player 9 and up, they'd already have been encoding in MPEG-4 using H.264 and AAC, the format that Safari and Internet Explorer 9 prefer for the HTML5 video element.
HTML5 replacing flash ok, replacing native executables? Call me when it happens.
HTML5 uses WebGL, an optional extension to the canvas element based on OpenGL. But as another comment points out, WebGL isn't fully there yet.
I already warned my Comcast local they would lose me if they try it, and they haven't.
I'm guessing that Comcast chooses to introduce caps in those markets where it has the least competition. Such caps might be harshest in markets where the only competitor is dial-up. Perhaps you live in a market with fiber to the home or really fast DSL.
I see no reason why developers wouldn't shift to browsers for everything.
The ability to mod? Bandwidth? Connection speed? Control? The ability to play the game even if the server goes down?
Because there's money to be made in other kinds of games. In many cases, a lot of money. As an example Call of Duty Black Ops sold more than a billion dollars worth. Publishers are not going to run away from those kind of sales.
So long as people want to buy things other than Bejewled and Tetris, which they appear to still do to the tune of billions of dollars, developers will make other kinds of games. The casual market hasn't hurt the AAA market at all. Heck if anything it has helped it because some people try out those casual games and then find gaming is fun and look for more.
and yet VM are still limited on 3D / video card use. I hear that new MS VM can use some of a real video card but it's DX only (buggy) and no OPEN GL.
Modern NES emulators strive for exact timing accuracy so that they can run games that rely on more obscure corner cases of the NES hardware. There is also a native Super NES emulator that stresses a PC because it too strives for accuracy.
A local app will always be faster than anything running in the browser.
Go ahead, do something along the lines of RAGE in a browser.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Tell me when the Unreal Engine is ported to Javascript/WebGL and I can play Gears of War from the browser at the same level I could with a native application.
When we reach that level (or people simply stop playing 3D games), then I might believe that transition will occur. Maybe it'll happen with flash games soon, but I'm not holding my breath.
At that point why have the browser at all? Because another layer of abstraction is awesome?
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
Even before the vastly overhyped Network Computer, there has been this argument that "local storage is going away" to be replaced by some centrally-managed system over infinitely-fast network connections. The "cloud" metaphor is simply the latest incarnation of this unbelievably pollyanna-ish view of the future of computing platforms and all the applications built on them.
It is only people who have no clue about how "the rest of the platform" works who keep hyping this stupidity.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that. Nothing is more frustrating than being in the middle of a game which needs online connectivity and everything freezes because your connection sagged/server overheated/too many people online or the service you're connecting too just puked. No thanks.
I'll take HTML5 over flash anyday but if there's an installable version of your game, I'm buying that before I'll ever pay for some crappy cloud-based flavor.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
In other news, AJH16 predicts the death of Illyriad Games for failing to understand user trends and targeting a platform that won't be competitive with installs for some time [my money is on never] (at least outside the market currently filled by flash, which didn't require installation of individual games either.) I'm not sure how someone with any kind of understanding of the industry can make the harebrained claim that HTML5 will replace installed games unless the expect the death of complex video games entirely. The fact is that installed games simply have more direct access to their data and hardware as they can be given more permissions. I don't want (and fear to think) what would happen if I gave my browser the same access to my hardware that I would trust a video game with. An app cache isn't a good way to manage what games are installed. It's a solution in search of a problem.
Installed games are already used primarily by geeky types that prefer an install. Those who don't understand computers at that level tend to get games for consoles, not PCs. They are completely ignoring both the console market and the demographic of the PC market that actually uses installed games and are quite frankly talking out their ass as soon as they move away from talking about flash based games (which yes, HTML5 is an obvious threat to since it directly fills the same need). Basically they stated the obvious and then departed well off in to left field.
AJ Henderson
It isn't "will they?" but "should they?" This would mean more or less the death of modding. Plus, I can already see the DRM-ists rubbing their hands together in glee, since most players will have no access to the games they are playing, which can be shut down at any time (I'm looking at you, EA, and your multiplayer-server track record). I see this as a way to make things easy for the developer but to take freedom away from the player and modder.
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
I think by the time we have some type of unified platform that all games will be developed for regardless of OS or hardware.. HTML5 will have already been relegated to the dustbin of history as an obsolete standard. I am not saying this to knock HTML5, but to highlight just how far off such a unification probably is.
Personally, this interview, to me reads like developers who see only their own domain and are forgetting to take into account all the other domains within gaming... ones where writing to the specific hardware is important, where multiplayer and network access are not important at all, etc etc.
You could do all of those in a browser... like I said, browsers are becoming more and more like an OS.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Maybe HTML5 will fill some niches that Flash can not, but this is like a fresh Java programmer predicting the death of C. It will keep it's fat fingers on the web for the unforseeable future.
"Administrative Privileges" is a relatively new concept for for the kind of system a person would install games on.
Limited user accounts, those without administrative privileges, were introduced to home versions of Windows in the fourth quarter of 2001 as part of Windows XP. Yes, ten years old is "relatively new" compared to the history of personal computing (since the mid-1970s), but modern PC games tend to require a CPU and GPU that are even newer.
And if you look at where things are headed with OSes (Windows 8 and iOS for example), you'll see that's exactly the case. Browsers and OSes are converging...
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
You could do all of those in a browser... like I said, browsers are becoming more and more like an OS.
Because you can and because it's the best way are two wildly different things. Powerful machines are dirt cheap, and memory is even cheaper. It's ridiculous to say that streaming games will replace installed games because it's just a really stupid way to do a lot of games. Applications too. I'm not running a frakin' word processor from my browser unless I absolutely have to. An internet browser should not do more than browse the internet.
Ridiculous!
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
Not real games just silly games
No, no they aren't. There's more offerings for OSs now for various niches and special use cases, but when real work needs to be done a real OS needs to be used. Period.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
most game devs forget that now
Not only does it promise to let you get someone addicted to a game and then raise prices repeatedly to keep playing, it gives them nothing that they can make they're own changes to, or create an alternate server for. Total control.
(vogon) Resistance is useless! (/vogon)
That it would be quite difficult in the near term to implement due to bandwidth and other limitations won't bother them a bit.
Net bandwidth limits don't have any effect on demos run locally backed up by blingy powerpoint presentations. So, the higher ups will really be impressed.
And by the time the thing falls over on its face, they'll have moved on to the next job or position and let some other sucker catch the fallout for their "Brilliant Idea(tm)".
If you don't do it, your competitors will, and they'll be making games that work identically on more device platforms, on more browsers, on more operating systems.
If you had even the least bit of cluefulness about the subject matter you're spewing on about, you'd know that web browsers do not act identical in any way.
They don't act the same between browsers from different venders.
They don't act the same on different OSes.
Hell, Firefox and Safari don't even act the same on the same OS on different processor types (ARM/x86/PPC).
So before you go on making predictions about how everyone is going to move to the browser, why don't you get a clue first, kay?
Let me take you a step further. Games are not built to run on ANY VERSION of the Unreal engine. They run on a specific version they were built for and most of the time require changes to work on later versions, do you REALLY THINK the browser vendors are going to do better producing free products than the guys who get paid to do so and thats their entire lively hood?
Browser vendors are going after another target than game vendors, while not mutually exclusive, its just not worth it for them to play together.
That it would be quite difficult in the near term to implement due to bandwidth and other limitations won't bother them a bit.
So let me get this straight, downloading WoW, Eve Online, or CoH doesn't cause bandwidth issues, but using a web browser does? Thats pretty funny cause I downloaded Eve and CoH using my web browser :/ You do realize browsers can cache things right?
You really have no idea what you're talking about.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
"But will browser-based games really replace installed games?"
Short answer? NO!!
Longer Answer? NO WAY IN F*KING HELL!!!
Browser based gaming is a fad that is already fading away.
The only MMORPGs that run in the browser that I know of are in Flash... (Dofus for example, 11 million players)
Unless you count any online game with a bit of a RPG side a MMORPG.
The only MMORPGs that run in the browser that I know of are in Flash... (Dofus for example, 11 million players) Unless you count any online game with a bit of a RPG side a MMORPG.
Umm... RuneScape? Java "The game has approximately 10 million active accounts per month, over 156 million registered accounts, and is recognised by the Guinness World Records as the world's most popular free MMORPG" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuneScape
You mean RunEscape?
Is 1563649 a prime number?
I despise "online only" single player games. They are the scourge of current PC gaming, and just one more example of pain-in-the-ass DRM. I see absolutely no reason why I shouldn't be able to buy games and then run them on boxes with no network connection; the inability to do so is a huge retrograde step.
I live in a built up area with great connectivity, but even here the internet goes down every now and again. Not to mention some of the hassle I've had with temperamental WiFi routers over the years. Serving games up through the browser is fine, I guess, if they can do it right- but the inability to "install" (to save the game locally to my computer) would be a huge turn off for me- it might finally push me off PC gaming altogether if it became widespread.
This graphical turn-based strategy game, created by myself *cough*, is one of the better, more handsome examples of in-browser games without Flash:
http://elitecommand.net/
This seems to be another popular fad for predicting the future, similar to PC gaming is dying and cloud computing. Apparently because there seems to be one path and some companies are going so far as to offering cloud computing solutions to video games (so you can play them on ultra slow computers), does not mean it's going to catch on like wildfire and take over the world.
This will happen for small games that already exist solely in flash, of course, but this isn't going to work for bread and butter AAA titles. A lot of people want a more fulfilling experience and after playing games in a web browser... it just... feels lackluster for lack of a better word. It never feels like you start playing a game and you're immersed in a world. There are already somewhat major games like this too, like Quake Live and Legions which has already failed.
I think developers are pulling at straws. Because they don't know how to make good games anymore they look for a different technological breakthrough to differentiate themselves from everyone else... this isn't what gamers care about in the slightest though. When it all comes down to it, it's about a good game.
Google made / pushing WebGL as a replacement for Flash, which is much better than what any other companies are doing.
However, the Flash 11 feature set that was just published a day or two ago (coincidental timing, incidentally) also gives access to those functions, and it runs bytecode and no need for an interpreted language -- which for games, efficiency is absolutely key. Is it dead? Most definitely not - not for several years. How many media-rich games on Facebook do you see are HTML? Hell, how many media rich games are in HTML5, period?
http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/09/20/adobe-to-turn-up-the-dial-with-flash-player-11-and-adobe-air-3-in-early-october-supports-3d-gaming-hd-video-conferencing-and-more/
Can someone change the title from 'Game Devs Predict Death..." to "Two Game Developers Predict Death..."
Talk about a misleading title. Lets keep the quality on Slashdot high please.
From a user perspective I really hate flash. It is always getting corrupted and than needing to be re-installed. And the reinstall is often equally problematic it refuses to install or the existing one won't uninstall. It can't be replaced too soon for me.
Also Java, like Sega's Spiral Knights MMO.
ARM tablets can't, Intel ones can.
Let me know when Intel tablets are price-competitive with netbooks. The only Intel tablets I know of are those used in e.g. the medical field, and those cost five to ten times as much as a netbook.
I don't think anyone has mentioned it. Why hasn't Molehill been mentioned anywhere in the comments? It allows access to 3D hardware..
OK, we appear to have hit a definition clash. Let's start over: The advantage of an HTML5 web application over a native application is that a web application can be installed transparently into a more-or-less secure sandbox, unlike native applications that generally have access to the entire user account and whose installers have access to the entire system.
... wait, didn't MS also say a while ago that they have no intention of ever supporting webgl...?
So is our gaming future basically a huge number of pretty variations on web solitaire...?
We live, as we dream -- alone....
those are always fun.
Oddlabs created a Java based game called Tribal Trouble, which worked great, and was by virtue of Java cross platform, one of the first and best examples of a 100% java-based RTS from an independent. When they developed Tribal Trouble they gave the ability to play it directly from the browser w/o install (aside from a brief Java download). HTML 5 has promise, but this is a more complete 3D game experience than any Flash-based game I've seen, and it's been out for years. http://tribaltrouble2.gamesamba.com/