piatok, februára 11, 2011

HTML5 in games development from start-up business perspective #HTML5 #CasualConnect

One of the key questions each social gaming start-up needs to answer is the one about technology. Do you go HTML5, FLASH or native in case of mobile? These are some tough decisions with many consequences especially for non-technical founders (like me;). I did lots of research in last few weeks, discussions and presentations at this week’s Casual Connect in Hamburg helped me to solve the topic.


HTML5 was one of the buzz words of the conference (others were mobile and social gaming opporunities beyond Facebook). There was Zynga Germany (former Dextrose which focused on HTML5 Aves game engine) CTO, Paul Bakaus as well as Google’s Malte Ubl. Many other speakers touched the topic too - but nobody could give the ultimate answer. On the other hand insights they provided were very valuable.

HTML5 and open web seems to be the future. This is a great statement for every start-up company because it hides huge opportunities. But when does such future come? It’s not clear yet. Anyway, these are some key advantages and disadvantages.

Open web technologies solve many of the hot problems developers are facing these days. For example, how do you make your game available to masses? Ideally to everybody who’s online regardless the platform? HTML5 is the only solution how to make your product genuinely cross-platform. You wouldn’t need to worry about fragmented markets of various ecosystems (iOS, Android, Facebook, smart TVs) and devices . Your casual gaming audience just clicks the URL and can play without plug-ins or additional downloads. Game developers on the other side develops just once. How cool would that be?

Technical issues unfortunately make this very very hard today. Sure you can develop some nice games and there are already few people who’s done that but you will need to reinvent the wheel. Almost everything is doable through various hacks and crazy solutions which require lots of thinking, time and resources. There are problems with audio, mobile devices APIs, networking and lack of experienced talent. I don’t want to go into details, you can research them through recommended resources below. Additionally questions of distribution and marketing arise. How do you want to get your games to players? How do you want to market them? Where to focus with such a broad audience?


All of these can be probably solved probably in upcoming 12 months. There are some big heavyweight supporters of HTML5 (Google, Apple, Facebook, MS, Zynga, BigPoint). Browsers are also quickly embracing support. Companies that solve at least some of these problems will earn well-deserved reward. Opportunity for them is huge.

This leads me to my main point. Fundamental questions you should be asking yourself are not if to go with HTML5 or not. But rather: What do you want to do? Do you want to solve technical challenges, enable the future or build games, market and service them?

Posted via email from chrupi's startin-up

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