Develop Conference: 'The argument that there isn't a big enough user base is irrelevant', claims Turbulenz COO
The hotly debated and controversial HTML5 platform for browser is the future of gaming, claims Gavin Shields.
Speaking at the Develop in Brighton conference, the Turbulenz COO said that creating games for console had become too risky for many developers, whilst discoverability was a huge problem for developers on the App Store.
He added that the HTML5 platform had overcome many of its previous issues, such as the size of its potential userbase, which he cited as 1.3 billion, whilst it was also cheaper for developers to create content for compared to large triple-A console titles.
"I know many of you will have an overriding issue with all I’ve just said," said Shields, in reference to his positivity surrounding web platform.
"I know the name HTML5 invokes much cynicism but I have no doubt that it is the future. Since Google enabled Webgl by default in its browser last year, approximately 1.3bn have access to browsers that can play modern games in Javascript HTML5.
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"The argument that there isn’t a big enough user base for HTML5 is irrelevant. You’re no longer at the mercy of one business."
He added: "Day by day my colleagues and I become more convinced that it is the future."
The development costs of working around JS will far outweigh the market penetration. HTML5 is best suited for websites and presentational applications.
"Look what l can do" in HTML5 style apps arent going to cut it moving forward.
I always thought the more flavours we have to choose, the better, and html5+js is just a new, exciting flavour. So I welcome that.
But, as Drew said, games are much more that "look what I can do" apps; they require physics, complex AI, networking, etc. A lot of hand crafted code that, in itself, adds a lot of "added value" to the game. Now, in the html5+js, all that expensive code is going to be visible on each client?
What's going to happen is that a few, very few developers will do the huge effort of writing truly genuine pieces of code, and 24h after release into the wild, they'll see 1000 clones popping out everywhere, stealing the success.
html5+js is going to succeed in areas in which the added value of the js source code is not going to be high enough so the original developed can live with thousand of clones. That is, in cute tiny effects here and there.
Well, there is always GWT if you want to code HTML5 games in Java.
Unity is perhaps also a future alternative since they now have a Flash publish thingie.
So you can basically just stick to a proven language/framework and off you go. No need for JS.
A method of hiding and securing game code needs to be found before HTML5 can be realistically adopted by developers.
Imagine what a hacker could do, when all of your game-code is in a human-readable format that can be accessed via FirefoxToolsWeb DeveloperInspect
