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Comment by BoysenberryPi | Hacker News Reader

I see the WebGL improvements and how on their blog they market it as "Firefox Gets Better Video Gaming" and I really have to say, as a game developer, I really don't want the future of gaming to be on the web. This is more than just Javascript hate. It's hard to monetize games if you aren't going free to play with microtransactions. And really, on a personal level, I just like downloading games and playing them offline. I'm not always near internet access.

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You don't have to use JavaScript. (See emscripten, binaryen etc.)

The Web is basically just a runtime you don't have to host your files on a server if you don't want. You can distribute them via CDs if you prefer. Also you can use Service Workers now.

That said monetisation all depends on the product not the medium. Just look at Minecraft. It didn't use ads or microtransactions and yet it was run from a Java applet in a browser.

Yeah, but many of us game developers don't want to use any of that either. At the end of the day, those tools don't ensure that we obtain the same level of quality out the other end.

Framerates aren't the same, memory usage isn't the same, and you can't easily tweak these things once they've come out the other end. The web _isn't_ just a runtime. It's abstracted like that, but browsers are glorified HTML renders with JavaScript bindings, event handling, and sound and video playback to game developers.

HN has a subset of the community constantly raving about these things for game developers, but where are the game developers actually praising these things? I don't know of any, personally. We're all too busy with desktop games.

Myself, I'm currently working on a game that targets both the web and the desktop. I like the accessibility of the former (just go to the site and play, nearly frictionless), but the latter has better FPS by an order of magnitude[0] for the same C codebase, so I'd rather keep my options open.

[0] Mind you, said order of magnitude applies to uncapped framerate.

*Sorry, it's quite a bit smaller than an order of magnitude. It's a non-trivial difference though.

I don't think I'm understanding you. What tools ensure you get the same level of quality on the user's setup? Things are always different on the user's hardware/system.

I assume they mean same quality in the browser versus on the desktop. The difference is noticeable. Yes, there's differences between machines, but if you're offering only the browser version, the people with the least powerful machines could get a bad experience.

Distribution via CDs is not even realistic. That might work for Linux distributions who want to sell CDs to the 10 people who want to buy them but for games when most sells are made via Steam that isn't even a serious idea.

Minecraft also notoriously performs terrible. Given what Minecraft is sure that might work for Minecraft. It wouldn't work for an AAA game.

OK use what ever distribution and monetisation strategy you want. The point was that you are not restricted to serving your files from a online server or making money via ads/microtransactions just because you are using the Web.

FWIW, Service Workers allow content to be downloaded in the background and to be made offline.

Mainstream gaming will never catch on the Web. But Mozilla is working on WebVR to create an open and distributed platform for VR (https://mozvr.com). You'll be able to publish VR content in seconds and traverse from world to world. WebGL2 is exciting for that space.

Service Workers allow content to be downloaded in the background and to be made offline.

In practice, service workers seem to mostly be drive-by installs of forms of hostile code. Look at "about:serviceworkers" in Firefox to see what's running. Did you ask for any of those? I have, excluding sites where I have a login:

* https://www.youtube.com, https://plus.google.com I've never signed into Youtube, or Google, on this machine, but have watched YouTube videos.

* https://www.bajajfinserv.in - A financial service in India. I was checking out something from Wikipedia, and this drive-by installed.

* https://www.theguardian.com - I've read their site, but do not have a login.

* https://weather.com - checked weather, don't have a login.

* https://v6p9d9t4.ssl.hwcdn.net - No idea what this is. Going there returns XML with "<Message>Access denied.</Message><Details>Anonymous users does not have storage.objects.list access to bucket itchio.</Details>".

* https://fee.org - "Foundation for Economic Education", a right-wing think tank. Does a drive-by install for any home page access.

And if you looked at your browser's cache, you'd find code from many more sites. So what?

It is "about:serviceworkers" for others trying this out and not getting it to work.

To disable service workers, set dom.serviceWorkers.enabled=false in about:config.

what is the downside? There doesn't seem to be any permissioning other than completely turning them off, and these could be used to implement another form of supercookie.

Gaming on the web isn't really that new: see the popularity of Flash games. All this progress just means that doesn't have to be based on old closed plugins.

Don't worry, binaries will always be around. The future of the majority of gaming is not on the web.

I thought with the WebAssembly we can have (sort of) both? (not really binaries because it's bytecode and not really on the web because it runs somewhat in a different context, but then again, are web workers not on the web? Perhaps it's hard to define what "on the web" means).

Yeah, I meant OS-specific binaries. For performance reasons I'm way more interested in important services being delivered by Linux binaries than Chrome or Firefox binaries.

well, there are asm.js and in the near future web assembly (basically, binaries for the web)

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