[sillysaurus3]

If a browser is an extra layer of junk, then surely a bunch of the features that come with an OS are unnecessary junk too. Printer drivers, for example. But of course, printer drivers don't impede the ability to make games in any way. The fact that platforms have features which are useful for other purposes is unrelated to whether a platform can be useful for a specific purpose, like making games.

There's nothing that Steam can do which can't also be done in a browser. Except, of course, store more than 5 MB of assets.

Why not use Steam? Because Gabe is going to die someday, and there's no reason to think that his successor will inherit his good judgement. Locking yourself into a monoculture isn't a good idea when your whole business can be smashed by one poor decision by the company pushing that monoculture. It's the same reason you don't see any companies built solely on Facebook or Twitter. (Apple is a notable exception, but companies can still live or die based on whether Apple feels like admitting you into their appstore.) Yes, Steam is pretty awesome right now, but arguing against exploring other alternatives is arguing against progress of any kind.

Your objections seem to boil down to "a browser isn't meant for games." Well, nothing short of a gaming console is truly meant for games. But a browser can be used for games, if only the manufacturers would provide a single necessary tool: a place to put them. That is the sum total of my argument, and it mystifies me why so many people are not only against this idea, but somehow offended that a browser might be repurposed for anything other than viewing lines of text.

[lmm]

> If a browser is an extra layer of junk, then surely a bunch of the features that come with an OS are unnecessary junk too. Printer drivers, for example. But of course, printer drivers don't impede the ability to make games in any way. The fact that platforms have features which are useful for other purposes is unrelated to whether a platform can be useful for a specific purpose, like making games.

But if you don't want to use them, printer drivers don't get in the way. Even if I'm laying out my screen by hand, I still have to worry about what the browser layout engine will do if the user resizes the window. If I want to capture keyboard input, or even just make API calls, I have to jump through hoops to convince the browser I'm not a malicious remote document. And whatever I'm writing, I have to transpile it into javascript, which is a pain for debugging.

> Why not use Steam? Because Gabe is going to die someday, and there's no reason to think that his successor will inherit his good judgement. Locking yourself into a monoculture isn't a good idea when your whole business can be smashed by one poor decision by the company pushing that monoculture. It's the same reason you don't see any companies built solely on Facebook or Twitter. (Apple is a notable exception, but companies can still live or die based on whether Apple feels like admitting you into their appstore.) Yes, Steam is pretty awesome right now, but arguing against exploring other alternatives is arguing against progress of any kind.

Are you that much safer on the browser? You'll write games that work for one, maybe two rendering engines - one of them made by google, the other made by an organization that gets most of its funding from google. The web's standards might theoretically be open, but they're so enormous and complex; writing your own browser from scratch (to the standard that modern html games require) is beyond the resources of all but the biggest organizations.

I'd certainly favour an open standard for a steam-like games runtime. Which would be a lot simpler than the browser standards, which would make competing implementations much more practical.

> Your objections seem to boil down to "a browser isn't meant for games." Well, nothing short of a gaming console is truly meant for games. But a browser can be used for games, if only the manufacturers would provide a single necessary tool: a place to put them. That is the sum total of my argument, and it mystifies me why so many people are not only against this idea, but somehow offended that a browser might be repurposed for anything other than viewing lines of text.

I am offended, because I have a sense of engineering aesthetics, and bodging everything into the browser is ugly. And from a practical point of view, I fear a future where the only programming jobs require javascript, because having to write javascript makes me very sad.

[the_af]

> Why not use Steam? Because Gabe is going to die someday, and there's no reason to think that his successor will inherit his good judgement. Locking yourself into a monoculture isn't a good idea when your whole business can be smashed by one poor decision by the company pushing that monoculture.

I fully agree with your opinion on this. I also can envision a future where AAA games can run fine on the browser, which would act like a universal platform. Not sure if this will ever come to pass, but it is technically feasible. I just don't like javascript :)