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THE GAMING WORLD AND THE WEB have been on a collision course with each other since social games began bringing gaming to the masses and helped make what was once a subculture a mainstream, mass-market phenomenon. Throw mobile into the mix and suddenly you have a massive phenomenon that is going to become more important as more devices get into people’s hands.
For example, one story making its way around the web as of this writing is that game developer Rovio, creator of the Angry Birds franchise, is estimated to be worth approximately 8 billion dollars, almost the same as venerable phone maker Nokia. These days people spend more time on their phones and tablets than ever before, and games (in addition to social networks) account for a significant portion of that time. Smartphones and tablets are significantly displacing dedicated mobile gaming devices from Nintendo and Sony. With HTML5, game developers now have technology that has the capability to reach more people than ever imaginable from a single codebase.
HTML5 mobile game development is currently a new technology that people aren’t sure what to make of yet, much like smartphone games were in 2008 when the Apple App Store launched. However, there are some serious heavyweights pushing for the success of HTML5 gaming. Facebook, which launched its App Center in May 2012, has made HTML5-based Web Apps first-class citizens on mobile and is looking for ways to monetize on mobile and get out from underneath the thumb of the 30% fee Apple takes for in-app purchases in its app store. Carriers such as AT&T similarly view web apps as a way to recapture revenue lost to Google and Apple.
All is not rosy in the HTML5 game development picture, however. Different devices have different capabilities, levels of performance, and screen resolutions, and navigating the dangerous waters of mobile HTML5 game development requires some careful sailing. That’s where this book comes in. Its goal is to provide a pragmatic roadmap to build mobile games in HTML5, covering both the possibilities and limitations of the medium. If HTML5 game development on the desktop is still in its infancy, mobile HTML5 game development is still embryonic. The possibilities to do great things are within reach, but the first smash success in the medium is still to be seen.
Getting into a technology at an early stage can provide significant benefits. One of the wonderful things in working in new technologies is that the noise level is minimal, and less is required to generate a splash than in other established mediums. HTML5 games, especially mobile ones, have budgets that are tiny fractions of the millions of dollars that standard PC and console games have, and yet they have the opportunity to create a smash hit in an instant due to the viral nature of the web. Mobile HTML5 games have even more potential for explosive growth because they can be shared instantly with a link rather than requiring the recipients to download an app that might not be available for their device from an app store.
This book is a journey through the world of possibilities that the exciting realm of HTML5 mobile game development presents and I hope you’ll jump aboard. |
