Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Shorrock 4916 days ago
As someone who has been working for the better part of 2 years on a browser-based game, I hope your predictions come true. In particular I've found the blending of what's expected in typical web-apps and how games function to bo some of the more interesting benefits of approaching development from this angle.

The ability to seamlessly persist game state across devices is a powerful construct that really enables you to play everywhere. While being a simply useful mechanism, it also really helps users stay mentally engaged in the game experience if they can access it at any time. This fact builds upon itself if they can do so in small bite-sized chunks.

Additionally, the ease of acquisition of such games (we're using a DOM based approach, however, Canvas also applies here) is also a big win. We've seen our game gain tremendous traction in various offices where people wouldn't normally play games as you a) don't need to install anything and b) can play in 30 second intervals.

These two unique factors combined gives you a devious means to provide compelling game experiences regardless of where you and what type of computer you have access to.