DIYgamer

The Inevitable Rise of Browser Games

Browser games  have always provided a snack, of sorts, to compliment our main gaming experiences on the PC/consoles. This was ideal when they were merely simple games that didn’t have much depth or development money. But now, with the coming of new browser technology and upgrades to both Java and Flash, there is certain to be a resurgence of browser games that not only provide more in depth gameplay, but can seriously contend with the main stays of gaming powerhouses for years to come.

Everybody, especially those who are reading this, has probably played at least one browser game. They are unavoidable sometimes, especially when you are bored at work … and on break. Anyways, for almost as long as I can remember there have always been some sort of browser based games. Today, they come in all shapes and sizes and are now even being offered in a variety of different genres including shooters. So, aside from pure graphics technology, there’s becoming less and less of a difference between playing a game in a browser and playing a game elsewhere.

Browser and flash games have been a mainstay of indie development almost since its inception. In fact, indie developers probably account for the majority of browser game development. When was the last time you saw EA put out a browser game that wasn’t intended as promotional material for one of their larger console-based games (example: Dragon Age)? Needless to say, it will probably be indie devs who take us to th next level of browser development which makes sense seeing as how we are on the verge of a sort of renaissance of gaming right now.

RuneScape is a browser-based MMORPG that features some surprisingly good graphics.

So what exactly is going to cause this rise in browser game development? There’s actually a combination of things that I believe will lead to a resurgence of what is to come.

First, like I said earlier, we are on the verge of a renaissance in gaming. With the coming of newer technologies and the ease at which developing a game is today, financially speaking, the world’s of professional gaming and indie gaming are starting to mesh more so than ever before. Browser’s have always been a great place for development by indie devs and will continue well into the future.

Second, Flash GPU acceleration. Up until a few days ago all flash based games, videos, pages, etc. were running strictly off your CPU. This created a limit as to just what you could do, especially in terms of graphics processing. CPUs just aren’t optimized to handle graphics as GPUs are, hence their name. While this probably won’t have an immediate affect on browser gaming, I’d be surprised if we didn’t see something coming out of this in the future.

Finally, browser development always has and always will be a great medium to reach millions (billions?) of potential customers. Your developing for the one platform almost everybody has as long as they have a computer. Hell, in the future people may even be playing flash browser games on their phone. Combine that with the fact that there are about 10 different sites that will gladly host your game for you and you have the holy trinity of development handed to you: a large customer base, easy/cheap development with flash, and multiple distribution platforms.

These three things are creating a perfect storm of events to rally the base for browser game development. Which is great! Games like Braid, Machinarium (which is already developed with flash), Clover would all transfer really well over into a browser model where you can just sign in to a website and play. Would that not be the optimal way to get your indie gaming fix, instead of having to download and install it?

That last point is up for debate, of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this were to come to pass over the next few years.