Building Browsergames

Make your game known: an Open Approach

My name is Thijs Van der Schaeghe. I have been developing browser based games for over five years now. My first game was Route to Destiny, a neo-apocalyptic RPG; my second and latest game is Dolumar, a fantasy strategy game.

When people ask me what the hardest part of browser game development is, I always answer the same thing: making people play your game. There are hundreds of so called browser games directories around and most of them are crappy. However, if you want to get your game known, you’ll have to add your game on various websites. Now, wouldn’t it be great if you wouldn’t have to do all that?

That’s why I came up with Browser Games Hub. Instead of putting your information on every bloody game directory, you force them to fetch your information themselves. In cooperation with a bunch of other developers, we developed an XML schema that holds all information about your game. This way, you can provide these websites with an accurate and up to date player count, a list of game servers, links to news, screenshots, logos, etc.

So, how does it work? You put a little XML file on your own server and put a link to this file on your game home page. Browser games hub will read this file once every day and update the information. The hub, in his turn, providers website owners the data of all registered games.

<browsergameshub version="0.1">
	<name>Dolumar</name>
	<site_url>http://dolumar.be/</site_url>
</browsergameshub>

This is, of course, only the first step; a name and a website are not very interesting to publish on a website. You can find way more information on browser games hub.

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Thijs Van der Schaeghe has been developing browser based games for over five years now. His first game was Route to Destiny, a neo-apocalyptic RPG; and his second (and currently latest) game was Dolumar, a fantasy strategy game.

Tags: browser games hub, openid, xml