The Death of an HTML5 Game Breeds an Open Source Project

colinneagle writes "German social gaming company Wooga has thrown in the towel on its HTML5 project after seeing little return on the increasing amount of effort put into its Magic Land Island game. Some early success convinced Wooga to devote additional resources to the game, which was launched in October of last year. However, 'As the project continued to progress, so did the industry. Whilst the benefits of an open platform future are clear for games developers, it became clear halfway through Magic Land Island's development cycle that the technology wasn't yet ready for mainstream exposure.' The announcement sheds some interesting light on HTML5, as Wooga hardly holds back on any of the details behind the game's failure. The biggest barriers to HTML5's entry to the mainstream include internet connectivity and limitations on sound. The consensus? The time for HTML5 will come; it's just not quite there yet. In the meantime, Wooga has made the game open source so other HTML5 developers can learn from it."

Re:But Flash is dead, right?

[ackthpt]

Didn't they get Steve Jobs' memo?

Despite it supposedly being dead, it continues to claw at us from the grave "Install Update Now?"

Re:But Flash is dead, right?

[adisakp]

The lesson is you don't make games in HTML or Flash. You do it the correct way in C++.

You can't run C++ from a browser using any sort of standards... and Flash is pretty much installed on enough machines to be considered a standard (heck it's even built-in to Chrome).

Re:Please, no sound

[shutdown -p now]

It's a game, not a webpage. It's perfectly reasonable and expected for it to play sound at you at random times.

What is really needed is a clean separation into apps and pages. Google is pushing for that in Chrome, but other browsers haven't really picked it up yet.

Re:I'd settle for

[geminidomino]

Diablo 3 is nothign more than Diablo 2.

If that were actually true, ActiBlizz would be drawing a lot less nerdrage over the game.