HN Explorer

10 comments

[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 36.6 ms ] thread
jimgreer
Looks pretty cool, and the physics are a nice touch. Honestly though, I'm pretty skeptical about people being able to create much of a variety of games unless they can do basic scripting. Still, there's a lot of 'remix this game' possibilities.
ivankirigin
I think they have a basic event framework. Think about all those side scrollers out there, working with the same physics and layout - with almost unlimited possibilities.

It's like myspace layouts + flash gaming. I think people will love it.

jimgreer
I hate to be the naysayer on this, but I disagree. An ugly MySpace page is interesting because your friends are on it. A bad game your friend made is still just a bad game.

People who are talented enough to make good web games already have a tool to do it with - Flash (typically a pirated version). It's not a perfect tool, but it's very flexible.

I agree that the physics in this thing look great though.

ivankirigin
You can't tell from the video, but the social aspects are really big. It's about making, sharing, and playing games with friends.

This isn't for people who know flash. This is drag and drop game creation. They might have solved a really hard problem here.

jimgreer
This could do for games what Dreamweaver and FrontPage did for web authoring - sweet!
hhm
"A bad game your friend made is still just a bad game."

I don't think so. I've been doing games for a lot of time and in the amateur game dev communities, users tend to like simple and sometimes bad games that are made by their community friends.

mathildepignol
"An ugly MySpace page is interesting because your friends are on it." Exactly! :-) We believe people will want to play their friend's games just like they want to see their friend's MySpace page. The reason they got into MySpace in the first place is because they could express themselves through the layout of their page.
bererton
Hi Jim, We certainly have plans to allow people to do a lot more than just basic scripting. The idea is to open the API and let people with the programming skills go as deep as they want.