The web browser game is about to go through a drastic revolution. No longer will we be limited to planting farms on 2D isometric environments. The games of the near future will be more like what you see on gaming consoles. Is this going to be enabled by technology like Flash? Will it be another browser plugin like Unity Web Player? Well yes, those will play a part, but the core of the coup d’état on browser games will be centered around WebGL and HTML5.
It’s still early stages in HTML5‘s insurgence, but 3D capabilities are already showing up in browsers like Firefox4 and Chrome via WebGL. This means there are already 450 million users with browsers than can do hardware accelerated 3D graphics. This without a doubt will be a boon for HTML5 based 3D gaming.
And it’s not just WebGL that’s pushing things forward. There are quite a few features of the HTML5 spec that are essential to games. The new Audio API, for instance, allows real time audio manipulation and playback making interactive sound a reality (an absolute requirement for sophisticated games). WebSockets allow true bi-directional networking, thus enabling efficient low latency communication for multi player games. App Cache allows you to load a website once and cache it, making the burden of large game downloads palatable.
Great Browser Based Games, Without the Need for Plugins
So what’s out there today? Are there already sophisticated games that can be played in the browser without the need for a plugin? Yes! Here’s a selection of some of my favorites:
- World’s Biggest Pacman – Great take on the classic.
- Quake – I wasted way too much time on this game as a kid, now it’s in a browser.
- Z-Type – This typing game could easily be the most addicting games on the web today.
- Pirates Love Daisies – A cute game in the tower defense genre.
As for HTML5/WebGL based games, since all of this technology is so new there’s not a tremendous amount of fully fleshed out functioning games yet. There are, however, plenty of fantastic demos that showcase what’s possible. Here’s a list of some of my favorites:
- ro.me – An incredible interactive art piece.
- HelloRacer™ WebGL – A great demo of the capabilities of the platform created by HelloEnjoy.
- FireFox 3D WebGL Demo – Showcases the capabilities of the browser with a nice retro feel.
What’s Holding Web-Based Games Back
The future of the browser game is looking bright — but there’s one major limitation of HTML5, and even Flash and Unity. We are stuck with mouse and keyboard as the only input device. To add to the frustration, you can’t sit around the same computer screen playing a web game with your friends like you can with a console, since you only have one keyboard and mouse. Console games have controllers, which allows more than one person to play a game on a shared screen — not to mention they support motion based input.
Even with 3D graphic acceleration, sound APIs and a host of other features, browser games today simply can’t compete. Our company Brass Monkey is about to change all that.
We’ve enabled technology that allows players to use their smartphones (iPhone, Android, etc.) as game controllers. Touch, accelerometer and other input from the phones are sent over our protocol at really fast speeds straight to the browser, creating experiences similar to the Nintendo Wii. In addition to Unity, Flash and native C++, HTML5 is an important endpoint for the Brass Monkey platform to support. And with that in mind, just today we announced an important acquisition of San Fran’s Emotely, which adds HTML5 to our platform.
I would love to hear what games you want to see played in your browser, and what kind of experiences you see HTML5 enabling in the future. Did I miss some killer HTML5 games in my list above? Let me know in the comments, or send me a message via Twitter at @MrChrisAllen.
