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Browser Based Games the future for MMORPG's?
Renton81
Member Posts: 92
After a recent accident this christmas, I am without my gaming rig temporarily. In the mean time I've adapted to making use of my crumby laptop. Failing to run any of my steam games, I looked at some browser based games and stumbled across a list of best browser based games available today.
I'm actually quite shocked at how good looking some of these games look, considering that they are browser based!
18 Free Browser Based Flash Games
Take for example The Lost Titan (a game I had never heard of up until this list). It's a WoW like MMORPG game, but the main thing that shocked me is how they could get something this good looking on browser. I was just amazed!
What's your impression of browser based games? Do you think they will be used more often by MMORPG dev's? It's quite an attractive thought - a game you don't need to download and you can start up in a flash.
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Comments
No they will never overtake native programs. They never will because of technical limitations. Native programs will always run faster and better. This is why HTML5 is not doing as well as they hoped on mobile platforms.
I am a mobile developer.
currently playing: DDO, AOC, WoT, P101
Once upon a time....
I think these game has handy niche, and they working very good for people who has not own comp and such.
but quality of browser games is not as good as download, which means it's not a future for me, but just an alternative.
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises.
Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
There some ok ones but they have some pretty steep limitations which is why they won't be taking over any time soon. By the time they are up to par enough to take over streaming will likely be firmly in place removing the need for the browser based gaming. Don't get me wrong, browser based gaming will always have a place for the casual facebook type of gamer.
But when computers get more and more powerful, it matter less and less to be computationally effiicent. Now you can do some 3d stuff on a web brower, in 5 years, it will be better than the current console graphics.
Definitely. Free Realms, Clones Wars Adventures and Moonlight Online are three examples of what can currently be done in a browser down the line of 3D worlds. Who knows what can be done a couple years from now.
Another thing to consider is the shift toward mobile has brought about far more acceptance of low-graphics and 2D game environments.
Here's my take on it:
What we know as a browser now could be very different from the browser experience in a few years. The surge in smartphones since 2007 has contributed to the stagnation of the browser, as compatibility and standards considerations include mobile iOS, android, Blackberry and Symbian. The flash/java/HTML5 juggle is still up in the air in many ways, as well. Once a standard emerges or the scale tips heavily in the direction of a particular favorite, we'll see browser tech move forward again, much like we saw in earlier years.
It looks like that has already started, though, as both IE6 (2006) and the pre-2006 versions of Firefox are starting to finally disappear (IE6 still is on about 6.5% of machines). We're about to move forward again, but mobile compatibility weighs heavy in direction it goes.
I'm not a mobile developer.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I dont see them overtaking either, but they are kind of a nice casual alternative.....I find myself trying more and more browser based games and a couple have become staples because I found no other real MMO equivalents (World of Dungeons & Trophy Fishing online 2)....The majority of browser games seem to be crappy RTS games that all look and feel the same but there are a few gems in the rough out there.
I don't think so. I played a few browser based games with the unity engine. Example BSG Battlestar Galactica. It stinks and it stinks bad. If games like bsg is the way of the future then there is no no future.
I play "Mystical Land" quite a bit and find it offers more gameplay features than a lot of MMO's I have tried.
But I look at each game individually. A game is a game to me. I don't have the preconceived notions everyone else around here seems to have. As in I would not be caught dead playing a browser game (you may substitute P2W game , Sub based game, F2P game, any game made by SOE etc. etc. etc. here)
I just expect that any game that is fun to play will be the "future"! It sure looks like there are a lot of decent games on that list though. Too bad I don't have time to play them all.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
I fear I'm too jaded by past bad experiences with flash to really give any games a fair chance to impress me.
They can give the game a nice sounding name and good looking graphics and light effects.
But those are momentary properties. These games require depth ni all sort of aspects to compete with "fat client" games.
I seriously don't think there is a browser game that offers depth. And for the moment there probably will not be any. Why would a game contain tons of data....if it wasn't nescessary.
Evolution in computers and gaming: Better = more data.
At the moment, browser based means no modern graphics API support, which in turn means that you can't get all that much use out of the video card. That massively cripples your performance. That could change someday, but fixing it doesn't look imminent.
The inability to download the game and store it on your hard drive is also problematic. As slow as hard drives are, they're still vastly faster than downloading off of the Internet. That means that a browser-based game has to have very little data needed at any given time, which greatly restricts what you can do with it.
The other problem with browser-based games is that the developer can't entirely control what it's doing. A game might work great on one browser and not run at all on another. A game might work fine in one version of a browser, only to see the next version of the same browser break the game.
A standalone client gives you great control over what your program does. You can write the exact source code that the video card will run. You can specify which code runs in which threads at which priorities. You can do that without any interference from a third-party browser. And you don't have any risk of some other browser tab causing problems, crashing the browser, and bringing your game down with it.
Not only are all of those problems fixable, but they all have the same fix: make a standalone client for your game.
Browser-based is fine for dinky little games that you play for ten minutes and then move on. But if you're trying to do something more complex like an MMORPG, even if you want a browser-based version, it's foolhardy to not also offer a standalone client option.
HTML5 and Flash both offer local storage. Most of these games have some download requirement; it's just fairly small, and almost always requires the Unity plugin and/or Flash.
Is it the future? Maybe. Honestly, I could care less if my games run in a browser. I just care about the game.
Is it going to be here soon? It still has a lot of problems. HTML5 helps a lot, and Flash is still a nice tool, but neither of them are "there" yet. I think it is an excellent idea; the browser acts as a nice sandboxing tool, it makes the game portable to any platform with a compliant web browser, and it makes distribution fairly straight-forward.
The two biggest hurdles right now are: differences in web browsers (this has been a long-standing problem, but it is getting better), and web browser performance across different platforms (for instance, accelerated graphics support). The latter is tricky, because you want game developers to have access to underlaying hardware, but on the flip side of that coin, you don't want hackers/malicious users to have access to it - allowing safe access is tricky, and if your the OS developer, you don't necessarily want to show your entire hand to competing web browser companies and allow them the same level of access.
Much like "Green Energy", there are a lot of compelling reasons to keep working towards it, but the technology isn't quite there yet to make it a defacto universal answer.
Agreed.
The industry can head in so many directions right now too. There are leaps being made in regards to lightweight game engines too. And like other things in different industries, they will one day reach parity with the big boys. Then you have streaming technology and more accessible internet. In my area it is becoming more and more common for people and business's to have fibre optics. There are so many facets of browser based gaming to look at and I haven't even remotely touched based on them.
I've already seen some ridiculously great looking browser games too
Pft I hope not. I tried various browser MMOs, and most of them crashed, disconnected some didn't even start. (Hello 4story!)
CRAP!
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I asked my magic eight ball and it told me browser games are not the future. Sorry.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
I guess that settles it then...The magic eight ball has settled alot of issues over the years....Are you sure you shook it up really good before getting the answer??....It wasn't at an angle or anything was it?
I can try again if you like but the magic eight ball doesn't lie.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville