Ga.me – new 'online game console' now in open beta | Hacker News Reader

Ga.me – new 'online game console' now in open beta

ga.me

28 pointsbenvio49 comments

I opened this and stared at it like an idiot for a minute. Am I behind the times to expect something on the main page of a site that says what it actually is?

Clicking through the tiny About link I found at the bottom of the page, this appears to be a platform for monetizing web-based games, at least some of which are WebGL-based (which I found out after clicking through one of them and being told, once again, that Chromium isn't interested).

So... new Newgrounds. Except with microtransactions. Unless I missed something?

It looks like a re-branding of Turbulenz platform (that has been around for a while, actually started as custom executable plugin, then moved onto JS+WebGL).

It's basically game-as-service platform where you get a game engine for free (it was recently open sourced), and if you decide to host your game on their servers, you pay them 30% of revenue fees.

This ga.me site looks like a new frontend for the end-users for accessing games published on this platform.

Here is a "sell" page for developers with more info about platform features:

http://biz.turbulenz.com/turbulenz

I think your just used to browsing one too many SaaS startup websites. Not every website needs a introduction and breakdown of features, especially for a game site where its target audience already knows what they are looking at.

That's not really what I usually look at, and I believe most sites will at least tell you what you're seeing (particularly when their presentation is just a gallery of thumbnails).

Anyway, given the other questions already posted in this thread, I'd say it's warranted and constructive criticism for whoever might be running this.

This was exactly my reaction. For a site that "just launched", I find it amusing that it doesn't explain what it is.

Although I'm not sure if the problem is the lack of an about page or something about the layout. Other websites such as steamstore, origin and gamejolt also don't have any information about their service on the front page (gog.com is an exception to this).

It's a game website that thinks mobile doesn't manner. Bright future indeed.

Serious or ironic?

Basically all of these games try to get you to make in-app purchases, which is a huge turn-off for me.

Honestly, I find these in-app purchasing platforms to be completely against the spirit of game development. I totally support a game developer's right to make money off their work, but the way these games aim to do that is so unethical.

Remember how fun games used to be before they were perverted by the greedy in-app purchasing tactics? I'm sure there weren't many games making a million dollars a day like Candy Crush, but with a classic game like Civilization you come to respect the genius of Sid Meiers. What's more important to you, a million dollars a day or the respect and admiration of the gaming community? It seems like an insatiable appetite for wealth, driven by the example of successful in-app purchasing games like Candy Crush, has been instilled in the game development community.

One more thing - when your performance in a game depends largely on how much money you spend on it, the value of actually being good at the game is basically nothing. How am I to know that the top players in the world didn't just drop a couple grand on the power ups and gold and whatever other virtual shit they try to peddle. In games like Civilization, the only way to win at the deity level was to be a bad ass motherfucker who doesn't take shit from any other civ - if Civilization was invented today, you would be converting your real money into virtual gold during those economic crunch times in a war campaign.

Back in the day, it took a genius to make a financially successful game. Nowadays, it just takes an in-app purchasing API. I hope people stop paying the people who game human emotions for personal profit and start paying the geniuses who make great games.

People are still paying for great games without IAP, probably in greater numbers now than at any point in history.

I was really intrigued until I realized it was all IAP and copies of existing games.

Were have you seen Polycraft or Save the Day before?

Entered username, clicked "Lets play" and got TypeError: Cannot call method 'split' of undefined at (...).js:63:508 at createUser

Which browser/OS?

latest stable Chrome/OSX

"Online game console"? You mean like Miniclip was back in the flash days?

What's up with the submission title?

There's no information in this post, the website doesn't refer to itself as an 'online game console', the website doesn't have much info either.

It just looks like a regular flash game website like newgrounds, miniclip, kongregate, except that it's using webgl instead of flash. What exactly makes it an 'online game console'? Why is this notable?

While the site loaded up fine on iOS, and it even seemed like the UI was nicely formatted; not one of the games I tried would play.

Some complained about lack of WebGL, some just said "couldn't open that link" when I pushed play.

I was confused because it seemed like the error was saying that the game I picked needs something iOS doesn't have and not that every game on the site wouldn't run.

Safari on iOS dotes not support WebGL, so I guess none of the games would work for you.

Right. What I was getting at is that your menu system worked fine and made no suggestion that none of the games would work for me without me clicking into each game and pushing play to see the error.

How am I supposed to know all your games run on the same engine?

Unique visual style. Many very sharp edges on front page. Try to post comment. "you need an email". input email. "post failed, you've not validated you're email" Validation email is from turbulenz. Slightly confusing. I like the feed by each game When Ben replied to a comment of mine I got 4 notifications, but as far as I could determine it was only one reply.

Overall pretty promising.

As a developer, am I required to use your engine to publish on ga.me? What are your quality standards for allowing a game onto the site?

There is no requirement to use the Turbulenz Engine to publish a game on ga.me. You can use whatever engine you want.

(Obviously you would need to use the relevant API hooks if you wanted to use any of the ga.me web services, for example, IAP, userdata, multiplayer, play information. But this is all modular.)

You can't close all the annoying popup messages in the top left corner (like the finish making account). That's really annoying, especially while trying to play a game. The ones I could close didn't seem to expire on their own.

Looks like it is built on Turbulenz (https://turbulenz.com/), an html5 game engine that went open source last year. It is a quality engine at this stage and a well done site.

Is there a reason this doesn't work for me in Chromium and suggests I download Chrome? Is there a relevant difference between the two, or is it just not set up to recognize and accept Chromium?

Man, I'm getting this too :/ It's probably that they're just checking for those four listed browsers they have there: Firefox, Chrome and IE 11.

> four listed browsers

> Firefox, Chrome and IE 11

I think you missed one.

None of the games were playable for me on Chrome. You might want to do some quality assurance before going any more public with this.

Chrome Version 32.0.1700.107

Which OS? Does WebGL work fine for you?

Awesome games, but i hate that the vertical toolbar doesn't give me any clue what action will trigger the buttons icons.

Most links on the site point to "Turbulenz". I would suggest changing it to pages on the same site at least.

Slightly unrelated random thought. Is there no API for interfacing with a games controller on the Web?

There is but support for gamepads is very limited and not widely supported.

None of the games worked in Firefox for me. Loaded OK but couldn't interact with the canvas

Same for me (Firefox 27.1, Ubuntu 12.04). The game loads, then nothing at all happen. Doesn't react to clicks, keyboard, anything. Some game complains when out of focus, I click on the canvas, then nothing.

What games did you try? Do you get any errors on the JavaScript console?

Sorry for the late reply, I've tried a couple of games with similar results, but POlycraft works at least.

All the games require WebGL, does this page work for you? http://get.webgl.org/

That page works for me but same thing - once the game loaded, I couldn't interact with it. Firefox 27.0.1 on Mac OS X.

Yes, latest Firefox

This is made in html5 or WebGL?

Have some Angularjs in it, for what could check.

WebGL.

If this is going where I can see it going, this is great; Please don't fuck it up. :)

Where do you see it going?

Pretty impressed with how quickly I was able to log on and begin playing games.

Non-physical console?

Cool domain name!

you mean like the steambox ?

ooooooooh

Reply on news.ycombinator.com