Today we have a lot of opportunities before us to create incredible projects that players can see without closing their browser. It’s not just about a beautiful “farm” (they have been made for a long time and successfully, I won’t tell you any revelations in this area). I’m talking about projects of a completely different kind.
The question arises – why haven’t thousands of such projects been created already? There are two answers and they are both banal: technology and readiness of the audience. The technological base, capable of providing all the necessary conditions, appeared not so long ago, a year and a half, maybe two years ago. The audience, in turn, has matured over a similar period of time and has become much more demanding of the entertainment offered by, say, a social network. Combine these two factors and we get practically a new trend, where there is money, audience, viral growth and scope for creativity.
Has this statement caught your attention? Then let’s try to understand everything step by step, starting with the general situation on the browser games market.
Stage 1: the formation and fading of the browser games market
If you think about it – browser games are a rare guest on any platform, be it a conference or a gaming portal. The information field is divided between AAA projects for retail, mobile games and client MOs. The news about the browser game will have more to do with its closure. Like for example it was with Lord of Ultima, a strategy game published by EA. Even the developers have the feeling that the market is more dead than alive. In fact, there are interesting examples of browser games of the usual formation, earning from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars a month.
If you briefly recall the history of browseroks, it turns out that despite the rapid start and very impressive examples of income (one “Fight Club” what is worth) – the direction did not captivate hundreds of followers. There was not some incredible “boom”, when everyone either wanted, tried, or made their own browser project. Many colleagues attribute this to the fact that for their time browserki were quite large and technologically complex. There were no ready-made engines and frameworks, and everyone developed the server infrastructure from scratch and to their own taste, making bumps on live players. Developing them turned out to be long, expensive, and with unclear results. Client MMORPGs are a little bit easier, but they are still developed by few people in the CIS (except Allods Team/Mail.ru – no one can be recalled). In other words, in their time browserki hit the ceiling, above which they jumped only many years later.
What has happened in these few years. The social market developed rapidly. At first, anyone could enter it, and the requirements for gameplay were frankly low. Technical difficulties were encountered, but they were solved much more easily. The opportunity to “build” your own simple social project for $15-30,000, which will at least return the money spent – fascinated many beginners and experienced developers.
In fact, a whole new fresh audience opened for browser games at that period, but many decided to work directly in networks, rather than attract players to their stand-alone projects. Social authorizations were developed a bit later.
Stage 2: Development of social game mechanics
Gradually, the market matured and more and more large projects appeared on it. “Rules of War”, ‘Zombie Farm’, ‘Tyuryaga’, ‘Mystery House’. All these games raised the quality bar for social games, brought new experiences and changed the landscape on the market a lot. Development of this level already requires dozens of people, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars. To a certain extent, thanks to them, the once-lost stand-alone browsers were caught up: visuals, mechanics, core-gameplay versatility.
Stage 3: the birth of a new trend
Now we have two options: to compete with the market leaders or to look for a new trend. Competing with the leaders is always a difficult task. A task that requires huge budgets, experienced professionals and many other things that are not available to everyone. On the other hand, trends are not discovered every day. What is even sadder – most people see them only when a dozen or so colleagues announce their success in a new field. On the one hand, we want to risk everything and grasp our luck. On the other hand, we are subconsciously afraid of failure, waiting for confirmation of our hypotheses. I will tell you a secret – when you have heard a few enthusiastic reports about a certain trend – it is no longer there. There is only a niche explored by other players, which they have started to occupy. Yes, it is possible to catch up – the sooner you catch up, the better, but it is already a game of catch-up. And we do not want to catch up, but to run far ahead …
It is quite possible that one unstarted trend is looming in front of us right now.
The situation changed dramatically after the release of Contract Wars – a full-fledged F2P 3D-shooter on Unity. The project dashingly passed several stages of evolution and immediately raised the bar of quality. I must pay tribute to it – the project still keeps it on a very high level, although it is already several years old.
If you look closely, you get a very interesting niche. With indicators at the level of good social projects and a tendency to growth. In order to understand more precisely “where we are getting into”, let’s consider and analyze a few myths that persistently accompany 3D games in the browser, particularly in social networks.