Mozilla Labs To Promote Open Web Gaming 127
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla Labs has started an initiative to promote and develop gaming based on Open Web technologies. They write, 'We are excited to present to you the latest initiative from Mozilla Labs: Gaming. Mozilla Labs Gaming is all about games built, delivered and played on the Open Web and the browser. We want to explore the wider set of technologies which make immersive gaming on the Open Web possible. We invite the wider community to play with cool, new tech and aim to help establish the Open Web as the platform for gaming across all your Internet connected devices.' To that end Mozilla Labs will launch Game On 2010, a game development competition, at the end of September."
Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe they should focus less on evangelization and more on making a browser that people want to use. Chrome is eating their lunch and they are content to push agendas instead of pushing code.
Re:Maybe... (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. The battle against H.264 will end up costing them even more market share too.
But what always seems weird to me in discussions about web games in here is the dissing of Facebook games. People complain how they are apparently timewasters, stupid and how people should be playing real games instead. Why? They are entertainment just as any other "real" game and people think they're fun to play. They might be more tailored towards casual people, but in fact in the 1990's and 2000's I remember reading discussions about how to get more non-hardcore players and especially girls to play games. It seems web games, especially social ones like on Facebook is an answer to that. Why do so many people have an axe to grind if someone plays and enjoys Facebook games?
Also, web games really aren't there to completely replace "real" games, there's place for both. Especially with the current technology and the sizes that "real" games require when installed. Internet and computer usage is completely different now than in 1995 and there's room for both type of games.
However where Mozilla probably fails here is that they want to strictly promote games using open technologies.
There are three problems to that; First of all, any of those technologies don't support games as good as Flash, and don't have a universal way for websites to embed them. Usually you also end up having to give out your full code, which just isn't going to work for companies and some people.
Secondly, Flash has awesome authoring tools for coders and artists. There's none such for the mentioned technologies - you usually just write it in JavaScript.
Thirdly but not least, the state of open source games is not good. Lack of artists, only copying of commercially successful games like Civilization and SimCity and similar just makes things worse. Projects also usually die quickly, just like those projects you worked with as a teenager. You had great interest in them at first, but then it just died and you moved on to something else. Commercial games overcome that problem by paying their developers, but that is not possible in open source world.
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
and don't have a universal way for websites to embed them.
There was iframe before there was iPod.
Usually you also end up having to give out your full code
To a greater extent than you end up giving your code to anyone with an SWF decompiler?
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Mozilla's goal is an open web, not "making a browser". Making a browser is a means to an end.
2) I'm curious about your use of "instead" instead of "in addition to".
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Chrome agenda is both. They are trying to "advance the web" by pushing "to open the web."
There is a reason that they almost exclusively chose open protocols and standards for their products and browsers.
They are large supporters of HTML 5, they pushed an open codec to give a viable alternative to h.264, they support imap and pop for gmail even though it allows you to bypass their adds, and they use jabber for their IM protocol instead of coming up with something new and closed like Mypsace, MS, Yahoo, Facebook, and Skype did.
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Re:When I want to read the article, it isn't there (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Maybe... (Score:1, Insightful)
Of course Mozilla supports open standards. My point was that they are SLOW to implement them. There is still no WebM support in stable releases of Firefox. I understand that they have limited resources but the point is that they seem to have a strange set of priorities (such as constantly fidgeting with Firefox's UI) when they do not yet completely support stuff that is YEARS old. Things like WebM are already a day late and dollar short when it comes to market penetration. The last thing we need is for projects such as Firefox dragging their feet supporting open standards--especially ones that are going to be of vital importance like which video codec is going to be strewn all over the web in the next 5-10 years.
Re:Maybe... (Score:1, Insightful)
Because the church will pay for it.
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because of stupid ass stunts like turning on silent automatic updates by default when we bitched and shouted at Microsoft for doing exactly the same thing.
Because of the way activity in one tab can still block the entire browser, such as showing an authentication prompt (no way to switch to another tab while that there box is showing).
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Re:Maybe... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Maybe... (Score:1, Insightful)
Because of stupid ass stunts like foisting the 'Awesome Bar' on us with no option to completely revert back to the old behaviour (no, setting maxRichResults to 0 DOES NOT WORK before someone chimes up with it - it gimps the AB somewhat but it does not revert it to pre-AB behaviour).
The Awesome Bar works well. It's striking how poorly the URL suggestion systems work in the location bars of other browsers. Do you have any specific examples of how the Awesome Bar is a "stupid ass stunt"?
Because of stupid ass stunts like turning on silent automatic updates by default when we bitched and shouted at Microsoft for doing exactly the same thing.
Turn it off in the options. Saying "it should be off by default" is pretty silly when it's so trivial to change the behaviour.
Because of the way activity in one tab can still block the entire browser, such as showing an authentication prompt (no way to switch to another tab while that there box is showing).
Firefox 4 is moving to a tab modal model. Your nerd rage seems to be a bit misdirected. Maybe it would be more productive to participate in the Firefox project rather than complaining about it on Slashdot.
Re:Maybe... (Score:2, Insightful)