With the onslaught of app stores saturating the digital market, developers are discovering that they’ll have to become more creative about distributing their finished product across various platforms. Enter HTML 5. The new standard markup language for making websites--and a formidable replacement for Adobe’s Flash--is now being used by developers to create one piece of code that works seamlessly across multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, Facebook, and the web. One company in particular, gaming startup Goko, is using this technology to transport a popular board game into an environment where friends using different mobile devices, in different parts of the world, can all play one another.
This concept of developing content for one platform and extending it to others isn’t new. There are already software development kits (SDKs) that can perform this type of function, but not all are as ubiquitous as HTML5. Ted Griggs, CEO and Co-founder of Goko, calls HTML5 the “nirvana for games you want to play everywhere.” Rather than locking the developer into one type of coding language, as other SDKs do, HTML5 is a standard, which gives the developer freedom to take their content anywhere HTML5 is supported. Griggs adds that this is one of the goals of HTML5, to “get contents where people are, rather than take people in a certain direction.”
To get its game into the iTunes App Store, Goko wrapped it up in a container using CocoonJS, a mobile gaming platform developed by San Francisco--based Ludei that enables developers to deploy and run HTML5 apps within other frameworks. So when someone uses their iOS device to download a game that is wrapped up in CocoonJS, it’s actually the HTML5 app, rather than one written in iOS’s native coding language, C#. The Netflix app for iOS uses a similar container, which makes it easily portable to different mobile devices and ensures that the user interface is standard across the board.
For its flagship HTML5 title, Goko elected to steer away from overstuffed genres such as first-person shooters and instead based its game on Dominion, a popular card game. “It’s the same as why you make a Spider-Man or a Batman movie. People know about that so you already have an ingrained audience,” says Griggs. “These games are inherently multiplayer and social, so one of the aspects we really wanted to show off was the idea that these multiplayer games are where people come together to play.”
The one major downside to developing in HTML5 is that it restricts developers from being able to opt into major features. For example, when Dominion hits the App Store, it won’t have Game Center access. But, the benefit of not being restricted to one digital shop or platform outweighs the little inconveniences.
Goko wanted to launch with a game like Dominion because it is "inherently multiplayer and social."
Unfortunately, as this article was being written, Goko pulled the Dominion game from Facebook, Google+, Goko.com, Android, and iOS immediately after launch, after users complained of numerous issues. A statement on Goko’s site said, “We will go live again when it’s ready,” without any indication of when that might happen. The problems will hopefully be resolved in the meantime, but regardless of what happens with Dominion in the short term, it seems certain that HTML5 will have a major impact on the future of mobile gaming, and could radically change the way that games and other apps are created, distributed, and enjoyed.
