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> Not sure if I'm the only one who feels this way, but it seems to me that many, if not most, JS starter kits are either over-engineered, or come with too much out of the box.

I think you'll have to be more specific. I don't find that to be the case for 'Create React App' for example. It's wonderfully curated and pretty amazing for both prototyping and for production ready apps.

It also tries really hard to not be opinionated (e.g. no "global-state" library, no single choice of CSS preprocessor).

> I have similar complaints about Polymer's PWA starter kit (which comes with an entire Redux setup and more)

Yeah, that certainly sounds overly opinionated. Redux should never be a 'default choice'.

> If you're just prototyping a game concept, you probably don't need a module bundler/Webpack at the start of your project

Kinda disagree here. I basically always want modules, even when prototyping.

> I don't find that to be the case for 'Create React App'

While I do appreciate CRA not bundling redux, et al, it's hard to say having 47 top level dependencies and being over 180MB in size isn't coming with "too much out of the box" for a basic app boilerplate.

For me using plain html/js + phaser was limiting in that I couldn't use modern es6+ features which are not yet supported well across browsers, using modules from npm etc.. This makes it easy to start coding in the same way as for example a React app with create-react-app.

(first time commenting)

As a developer using "game" web frameworks, I feel you're not wrong but you just missed an important point. Boilerplates are mostly used for learning and as reference rather than as a boilerplate that you'll effectively use. Yes they often are over-engi eered, I agree with you. But I deeply think that's not the point. To learn, they are perfect. To use, no. As a learning reference, yes. As a core architecture, that's risky.

And I won't even discuss about whether to use phaser over pixi/unity/any other framework. (ok my heart goes to pixi/howler without doubt over phaser) (that's between us)

Well, if that's all you want, then sure, you don't gain much from using boilerplate.

Boilerplate like create-react-app precisely hooks things together that are nontrivial to glue together, and often come with additional polish you aren't going to research and invest in every project.

So, I'd say "I think these do too much" misses the point of them.