Open Media Web

Two weeks ago, we had the occasion to join the games community during onGameStart, the first HTML5 Games conference. Speakers at the conference explored many facets of games development using Web technologies, things that work, things that don’t. To explore game developers needs further and gather inputs for HTML.next, we organized a workshop the day after the conference. The workshop report is now available.

Workshop participants included people from Bocoup, Google, Mozilla, RIM, Tecnalia, and Wooga, all passionate about games and Web technologies. During the workshop, more than 20 features that would enable the development of better games using regular Web technologies were reviewed, refined and classified, leading to the identification of 11 new features of particular interest for the games community, namely:

• Mouse lock
• Hardware feature detection
• Keyboard Capture
• Joystick API
• Higher-level semantics for CSS animations
• Improvements to Web Workers: « Pass by reference »
• Orientation lock
• Access to screen pixel density
• Surround sound support
• High performance timers
• Extensions to CSS

To push for the inclusion of these features within W3C working groups charters, track standardization progress in W3C, and discuss potential other features directly relevant to the development of games using Web technologies, a Games Community Group was proposed and created at the end of the workshop. This group is also to communicate how to build games on the Open Web Platform to the general public.

A community group is a discussion forum open to anyone, without fees, particularly well suited to serve as coordination point for a particular community within W3C. Are you interested in the progress of the Web platform for games development? Join the Games Community group!

Building on the success of this first workshop, we will run a W3C Games Community Group Summit on 3 November 2011, next to the New Game Conference in San Francisco. Stay tuned on the Open Media Web Blog for announcement!

Check the full workshop report for details. Also, if you want to learn more about building games with Web technologies, check and register for the online training course on Game development in HTML5.