New Game Distribution Service Goko Will Be HTML 5 Only

[Karloff]

New Game Distribution Service Goko Will Be HTML 5 Only

[vimeo=47498990]

Goko will bring Reiner Knizia and Rio Grande Games to the digital marketplace.

It's not often you see someone trying to claim that HTML5 is the perfect platform for digitally distributed games. Its chief advantage is that it can go anywhere, but it has been criticised as limited and lacking the technology needed to really help developers create great games. This was why German mobile game company Woonga, for one, dropped HTML5 earlier this year; at the time its founder, Philip Moesner, said HTML5 "has the potential to be a complete game changer, but the technology is not there yet." However startup Goko has gone HTML5 for its new digital distribution platform, and put out a trailer telling developers why they should go to Goko to make and distribute their games.

Goko CEO Ted Griggs is aware of HTML5's limitations. "If you're looking at HTML5 to do 3D WebGL-enabled games on every platform, then you're going to be very disappointed," he said. That's why Goko is focusing on card games in its initial releases; they fit the HTML5 format much more comfortably. It certainly helps that they have Rio Grande Games and Reiner Knizia on board, both of which are very well regarded card game makers. Goko's open beta for Dominion, played on iPad, has been mistaken for a native Apple app, Griggs claims.

Griggs wants to give smaller developers a leg-up in the dog-eat-dog world of social gaming. "The idea is that we want to give the tools to the independent, smaller developers so they can actually build the kinds of games that the bigger developers make," he said. The sort of tools that Zynga and EA have at their disposal are things smaller developers can only dream of, but with Goko on their side the smaller independents can pull off pretty much the same thing, allowing developers to satisfy customers rather than the needs of the platform. Or as Goko's website has it, "what would happen if we made it possible for developers to make games for people, not platforms?"

So far Goko has three games on its site [http://goko.com/games/], with more planned for release soon.

Source: Gamasutra [http://gamasutra.com/view/news/176114/Startup_backs_HTML5_devs_with_new_platform__and_a_whole_bunch_of_card_games.php]


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[Adam Lipkin]

The Goko launch has been, to put it mildly, disastrous, in a Half-Life 2/Diablo 3 way. There's a huge thread on BoardGameGeek discussing it (http://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/12629/multi-platform-news-new-html5-games-company-and-de), but the key points are: Bad pricing, bad communication, bad implementation, and bad concept from the get-go. As a longtime Dominion addict (and fan of the current, presumably doomed site at isotropic), I''m definitely not happy about this.

 

[Shinsei-J]

For some reason all I could hear was that "Goku makes HTML5 games".

-Snip

Damn that sucks, seemed like a nice idea.

 

[Furism]

According to John Carmack's keynote at QuakeCon (and his insight is usually pretty good), WebGL is a good idea but very dangerous. People always find way to leave the sandboxing that browsers do, and in the case of WebGL you potentially have a pretty complete access to a PC's memory.

I don't know much about WebGL but apparently you can still directly address memory for video optimization, so if you escape the sandbox, that is, the memory that is allocated to your process, it can be ugly. But again most people don't care about security half as much as they should.

 

[antipunt]

Anyone else saw the title and read that as Goku?

>_>

<_<

 

[weirdee]

So, they're going to revolutionize the game industry with HTML5 to publish games.....that are already available on every platform.

"well, if you want to make games without limitations like everybody previously advertised about HTML5 to the point where they claimed it would kill flash, then we're not for you, but if you like making nearly identical looking casual games, welcome aboard!"

 

[Strazdas]

HTLM5 is superior and the only thing stopping it is that some peope stil lhave s strange clinging on Flash (the worst programming language ever).
Except, well, there also are idiots who intentionaly make HTML5 look bad like GOKO (must be intentional cause noone is that stupid).

 

[Andrew_C]

HTLM5 is superior and the only thing stopping it is that some peope stil lhave s strange clinging on Flash (the worst programming language ever).
Except, well, there also are idiots who intentionaly make HTML5 look bad like GOKO (must be intentional cause noone is that stupid).

HTML5/Javascript/WebGL is only superior to Flash in that it is not a plugin.

Many games will only bother to support Chrome or Firefox.

It bring all the exciting security issues of Javascript to the table (and having a complete Javascript/ECMAScript interpreter built in is the cause of many Flash security issues). And then there the unknown security issues of WebGL, and if John Carmack says there will be issues, you can bet your shirt on it. His last decent game was Quake II, but he knows more about OpenGL actually works in the real world than the rest of the Khronos Group put together (they oversee OpenGL).

 

[Strazdas]

HTLM5 is superior and the only thing stopping it is that some peope stil lhave s strange clinging on Flash (the worst programming language ever).
Except, well, there also are idiots who intentionaly make HTML5 look bad like GOKO (must be intentional cause noone is that stupid).

HTML5/Javascript/WebGL is only superior to Flash in that it is not a plugin.

Many games will only bother to support Chrome or Firefox.

It bring all the exciting security issues of Javascript to the table (and having a complete Javascript/ECMAScript interpreter built in is the cause of many Flash security issues). And then there the unknown security issues of WebGL, and if John Carmack says there will be issues, you can bet your shirt on it. His last decent game was Quake II, but he knows more about OpenGL actually works in the real world than the rest of the Khronos Group put together (they oversee OpenGL).

No, its superior to flash beucase the programming language is better, more optimized and allowed more diversity. ALso Javascript could also be considered a plugin since you need to have java installed (for a seriuos javascript game anyway)

Thats good, since everyone should use firefox anyway.

Im not aware of HTML5 carrying over ther programming language securty issues. OFC there will be issues, like with all new technology. If we were afraid of issues we wouldn't have learn how to light a fire.

 

[Andrew_C]

ALso Javascript could also be considered a plugin since you need to have java installed (for a seriuos javascript game anyway)

Seriously? Javascript has NOTHING to do with Java. It was invented by Netscape in the mid 1990's and called Javascript because Java was trendy at the time. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript

Also, while it is possible to create a simple game using only HTML 5 functions and primitives, anything more complicated will require Javascript and 3D work will require WebGL.