WWWest-Online Development Blog

Back in the day, when a company (or an individual) wanted to make a game, they’d usually choose a platform and make it. When a game console company (Nintendo, Sega, etc.) made a game (or payed for one to be made), it was for their systems. You didn’t see “Super Mario Brothers” on any system that didn’t have “Nintendo” written on it.

Nowadays, that isn’t the case. Many games are made by  third parties, and though politics and various deals can still result in a game being released for only a single platform, most games are released for at least two. Actually, since the PC is now as good a “console” as others (well, maybe not as good), even games released by Microsoft for their XBox, are released on another “platform” as well . Anyway, I digress.

Browser-based games are a bit different, since unlike client-based games, most browser based are purely mouse-operated. You point and click. Then point somewhere else and click. If you want a bit of a change you can… read a book. Then come back and point and click. But seriously: browser-based games can be run on more or less anything, so long as it provides some form of point-and-click interface, whether it’s a mouse, a gamepad, or a cellphone’s numpad. But getting them to do so takes some work.

When WWWest-Online launches, we plan to make it playable from more than just the PC. Why? Well, unlike client-based games, browser-based games are not always a primary action, at least in my experience. What I mean by this is this: When I sit down to play WoW, Vanguard or any other client-based game, I sit down to play it. When I played KoL or Travian, on the other hand, it was more often than not a secondary action to something else. Working, reading, browsing, whatever.

So some of you are asking what the heck my point is. Bear with me, I’m getting there. Basically, what I’m saying is that browser-based games are quite often played “on the side”, or to fill up dead time. Some of that dead time is spent next to a computer, but some of it isn’t. And that’s the time we’re aiming for. We want to let you guys play the game whenever the heck (hey, there are children reading this, after all) you want. So if you’re on a train, and get an itch to play a bit, we want you to be able to scratch it.

And it’s not just the game itself. Since we plan  to have extra content in WWWest-Online, that content will also be available, so you’ll be able to drop by the tavern for some minigames, or just join the chat channels to shoot the breeze while you while away the time.

So towards that end, we want to make WWWest-Online available from several platforms, be it PC web browsers, cellphones, PDAs or whatever. How will we do it? That remains to be seen . If nothing else, we’ll have some fun figuring it all out.