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Spil Games throws its weight behind HTML5 for mobile Web games

August 31, 2010 6:00 AM
Dean Takahashi
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Spil Games operates Web game portals that reach more than 130 million users. So it’s interesting that the company is adopting the HTML5 standard for making mobile games that run in Web browsers.

HTML5 is under development as the next major revision of lingua franca of the Web, HTML or hypertext markup language. Spil Games is hoping to sway developers to the HTML5 cause — and away from rival platforms such as Adobe Flash — by holding a contest that will award $50,000 to the winning developers. The contest will run for six months, and the winners will have their games posted on Spil Games’ sites. Spil Games is also launching mobile game web sites where the content will be available to gamers. Spil Games host hit online games such as Uphill Rush 2 and Ludo Deluxe.

Peter Driessen (pictured), chief executive of Netherlands-based Spil Games, believes that HTML5 is the future of mobile gaming and wants to ensure that mobile games use technology based on open standards, rather than “walled garden” technologies that tie a developer’s content to a specific platform. Developers wind up having to spend too much money developing different versions of games for different platforms. With HTML5, developers can develop a game once and have it run on all devices with HTML5-compliant browsers on PCs, iPads, the iPhone, and Google Android phones.

HTML5 competes with other platform technologies such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight and Google Gears. HTML5 has been under development since 2004.

That in turn removes the barriers that mobile users face when they try to access certain games and can’t because of compatibility problems. Spil Games is one of the first online game companies to champion HTML5, but it’s unclear what other large players will do. Driessen contends that HTML5 will be the standard for mobile games within three years.

Spil Games was founded in 2000 by Driessen and Bennie Eeftink. It has more than 250 employees and operates 41 different game web sites. Rivals include other online game companies such as Big Fish Games, Real Networks, Miniclip and Oberon. The company rolled out social features on its portals in March. Traffic is up 60 percent from a year ago.

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  • jdowdell

    Say, Dean, “HTML5″ is a series of specifications… the first round was from WhatWG, and the W3C is now cleaning up and rationalizing this submission. That's in the ideal world. In the real world, there is “Apple HTML5″ (which in practice means VIDEO/H.264 support), “Firefox HTML5″ (which prefers VIDEO/Theora or VIDEO/VP8), “Google HTML5″ (which focuses on speed and which is often unplayable in other brands of “HTML5″), “Microsoft HTML5″ (which focuses so far on hardware acceleration and JavaScript speed)… Opera was one of the first proponents of the “HTML5″ brand, and of course one of the main strengths of HTML as a whole remains the idea that anyone can create an HTML renderer.There's no logical way to “base a game on 'HTML5'”… at best you can target one or another specific brand of implementation. It's possible to try to base it on the W3C's emerging work in a specification, but this would be orthogonal to actually making it work for an audience.Put more concisely, when you hear people talk about HTML then they're talking about the common and evolving markup techniques of the past decade, but when you hear talk about “HTML5″ it's a marketing label, a brand, and still needs some type of tethering to a specific reality.Or, put even more simply, talk about HTML. It's less confusing, less likely to betray you. jd/adobe

  • http://twitter.com/UntoldEnt Ryan Creighton

    i'm looking forward to hearing the future-former heads of Spil games deliver their postmortem at Casual Connect or GDC, explaining why this was the decision that cost them the business.- Ryan

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_DYECO2RCTINCJXLETWIZUBU3HY Ryan Thompson

    A clear sign Spil is in big trouble. They are no longer the world's biggest game distributor (Facebook ran by them in no time), and now people are moving to mobile, a platform where they find the iStore and Android market already controlling Spil's distributor role. So in a desperate move they try to promote HTML5, as it allows them to basicly do the same as they did on the web: offer free gaming portals. But what a tragic move, there is no way HTML5 can compete with the usability and quality of the installable app games in the apple/android market place. Not now and not in the future.

  • http://venturebeat.com/2011/07/13/spil-games-introduces-social-features-for-cross-platform-mobile-browser-games/ Spil Games introduces social features for cross-platform mobile browser games | VentureBeat

    [...] Spil Games is supporting HTML5, the new proposed format for the lingua franca of web applications. Spil Games first announced its support for HTML5 in August, 2010, and it has promoted HTML5 game development through a monthly contest. The company was also early [...]

  • http://www.socialnetworkbackgroundcheck.com/spil-games-introduces-social-features-for-cross-platform-mobile-browser-games/ Spil Games introduces social features for cross-platform mobile browser games | Social Network Background Check

    [...] Spil Games is supporting HTML5, the new proposed format for the lingua franca of web applications. Spil Games first announced its support for HTML5 in August, 2010, and it has promoted HTML5 game development through a monthly contest. The company was also early [...]

  • http://androidrockstar.com/?p=17213 Spil Games introduces social features for cross-platform mobile browser games

    [...] Spil Games is supporting HTML5, the new proposed format for the lingua franca of web applications. Spil Games first announced its support for HTML5 in August, 2010, and it has promoted HTML5 game development through a monthly contest. The company was also early [...]

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