Ready player web: Building modern web games (Chrome Dev Summit 2019)
hi I’m Tom Greenaway and I’m the game’s lead for the web developer relations team here at Google now I know what you might be thinking web activities is that really a thing isn’t flare a little passe and to report to native portable plays on Android and iPhone can the web really even compete well in this lightning talk I will quickly foreground some of the possibilities of but too the challenges that the web presents the game makes I’ll touch on topics such as why urban recital isn’t the most important thing in video games what the major fortitudes and the fatigues of the web are and lastly a few examples of game design patterns you can use to leverage when designing for the web so firstly the role performance of the device or the game is built for it that’s what decides the most successful games and scaffolds right well not really in the history of sport increase frequently it’s the programmes and video games that deliver some kind of mixture of innovation calmnes of access and last but not least fun in fact I would say fun is the most important factor in tournaments much more important than the graphical faithfulnes but let’s dive into these three assets a little bit more in depth with some examples so innovation think about when the first flow ensure recreations took off the bestselling console out of the PlayStation 3 the Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii it was the latter the console with the weakest rendition but the most hardware innovation and ease of access well this can planned many things where the games are easy to buy and download or whether a maneuver is portable and ever with you this is one of the reasons why mobile gaming has boomed over the last decade the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store have originated it ridiculously easy to download a game to your manoeuvre and these competitions are right there in your pocket always ready to play and lastly what about amusing some of the most successful mobile tournaments of all time were not pushing the graphical limits of their devices they concentrates on being enjoyable be taken into consideration the early portable strikes like outcome ninja or Angry Birds in other words if you play to the strengths of your stage and procreate your priority they’re often obligating game layouts waiting to be discovered so what are the strengths of your platform what are the strengths of the web well firstly it’s the most open and biggest programme that’s ever been created nearly every device in the world has a web browser and there are no limits on how you can monetize microtransactions subscriptions paywalls or ads there are no rules on the web right and the web is instantaneous and approximately frictionless with just a sound the subscribers can jump into your content via tie-up they find anywhere whether that’s on the web or inside of an app but like the superstar of any great story these fortes are also the web’s greatest weaknesses it runs on virtually all devices so to take full advantage of that you must design your sport to be accept and to be aware of different machines screen relevant resolutions and potentially develop for the lowest common denominator for example mobile safari only patronizes WebGL 1.0 and what about pays well the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store assured in a brand-new period of simple and trusted payment processing when inapp buys were created and unhappily the web doesn’t have builtin payment programmes like this which means that there’s a higher friction when customers are being asked to pay nonetheless there are a lot of network pulpits and api’s which help alleviate this question such as google pay stripe PayPal and even browser api’s like web fees and lastly the instantaneousness of the web that I mentioned yes it’s great that a user can laden your material instantaneously but to become that really work you need to finetune your material to laden as fast as possible and the weakness is that just as readily as a customer open your web page they can close it as well the ephemerality of the web is both potent and yet fragile at the same time but if you play your cards right you can make a game successful on the web by list on these strongs and mitigating these weaknesses so what’s the most unique feature of the web that we can hone in on with our play design it’s the link the beauty of the web browser is that just as readily as you were linked to a piece of content you as he user know that you can now share that link to someone else and so that repetition of being relation and then linking others to content that’s the strength of the web really it’s viral it’s the modernday wordofmouth marketing machine so how can you work the link itself into your competition blueprint the key is that we want to drive virality we want to give the user a reason to share the game and for the link that they share to be meaningful not just to them but to others as well so what interesting information can be shared in a connection well here are three categories you can experiment with challenger collaboration and exploration but what would the URLs of these games certainly definitely sounds like well I could create a puzzle in a game and then I could share a URL and that URL could be a playable link to that particular baffle or I could finish a stage and I could share the URL and what I share could be a player soul of me completing that elevation for others to compete against and lastly I could be playing a roguelike recreation detecting new areas of the world and I could find a secret room and then if I share the URL that could teleport a friend into that same apartment that I’ve discovered now for example here is a game called shellshocked IO where players are contributing to a shake mode stadium crap-shooter if the musician shares their current URL their friends can deep connection into that exact apartment the actor is in and compete against them also here’s a little game I concluded called space council well-developed applying the slick activity growing implement construct which by the way not only makes html5 recreations for the web but is on to itself an wholly webbased developing environment so I designed this game to demonstrate how URLs can be used to transmit data for the purposes of game design and inside of it is a level editor I built into the game when you play the game you can send a link and the link contains the entire heights scheme that you’ve created here on the left is the game itself being played try it out the game can be played on desktop or on mobile and why am i testifying a QR code as well well because QR codes can be a marketing tool for promoting content in the physical world if you access that URL in the QR code it will take you to another level I realise but this one’s a little bit more intense now you can imagine that space board had the opportunity to engender QR codes of grades that could be shared with a friend in person as well so in summary if you’re strange about the web’s potential for game developers “ve been thinking about” how you can play to the strengths of the pulpit backing as countless manoeuvres as possible think outside the box when building your monetization modeling and improve your activity to load as fast as possible so users can jump into it and play video games your play instantaneously but more importantly fix your competition enjoyable design it to be viral to leverage the URL so consumers have a reason to share it and spread the word about your game thanks and see you next time you
