Using Google Chrome To Distribute and Promote Your Games

Mark and Mike, from Google, talk about the Chrome Web Store and the opportunities for indie game developers

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/cc-google.mp3

Or listen to it here…

Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at Casual Connect in Seattle, and with me today are some special guests from Google. How about you guys introduce yourselves?

Mark: I’m Mark DeLoura, Game Developer Advocate with Google.

Mike: Mike Mengoff [?], Chrome Developer, with Google.

Interviewer: Now, you guys made an announcement today. Can you summarize exactly what that announcement is about, and how it can be relevant to smaller game developers?

Mike: Yeah. We talked about the Chrome Web Store that’s going to launch in the fall. It’s a marketplace for distributing web-based applications which includes games and we’re all excited about having them there.

We also talked a bit about the different languages to use for it, whether that’s flash or HTML5 or C++ through data quest.

Interviewer: So, let’s also talk first about the distribution potential. I know from the numbers from IO, can you talk about how many people have the Google Chrome client?

Mark: Yeah, over 70 million are the numbers we have right now.

Interviewer: So, what you’re going to be able to do then for game developers is be able to make games that will be in the Web Store that will be accessible to anyone who has the Chrome browser then, right?

Mike: Yeah, that’s right.

Interviewer: And so, you’re supporting Flash, and you’re also supporting Unity then and what other…

Mike: Well, flash is integrated into Chrome, so that’s one vector for game developers to target. HTML5 games and [?] games from Google back then, Doodle was one of those, is another vector. A third vector is the C++ through this thing called Native Client built into the browser, and we’ve worked with Unity to have them port their web player into Native Client. So, you can make a web app that’s a Unity game and ship it through the Chrome Web Store. That gets around having to go through the install process of a Unity plug-in.

Mark: And just to clarify that with Unity, to clear up the confusion because some people feel like or getting the impression that Unity actually installs in the browser. We have done that with flash, so with Chrome you get flash built-in and there’s no plug-in installed or anything.

The difference with Unity is not like we’re putting the Unity plug-in straight into the Chrome browser. What we’re saying is we’ve got this more general framework, Native Client, that will run any kind of C, C++ application with a little bit of porting.

And so, one of the options for that is to run the Unity game and the whole thing gets downloaded, the Unity framework, the engine as well as the actual game and gets running Native Client.

Interviewer: And so, now let’s talk about this Web Store. Is it going to be just a ton of apps? How can indie or smaller developers get visibility, and what’s the pricing structure?

Mike: I think we’re working out a lot of that still. I’m a big game geek, and I probably play more indie games than anything. So, I personally want to make sure that there’s a marketplace there for indie game developers. We need to work out the right way to go about doing it. Look on the other App Stores. It’s easy to point out problems in some. I’m hoping we don’t end up with our own raft of problems.

Mark: And so, I’m more general because I’m a Chrome developer advocate so I’ just focused on the apps in general. One of the really interesting things about when I come to a conference like this and just the games for us in general, we want people to be getting familiar with this concept of Chrome Web Store.

Games are something that someone is just going to see that one game. I have to have it. It’s got that very emotional impact, so we’re really keen to see games from that point of view. But, there will be a whole bunch of different categories in the store.

Interviewer: To clarify also, initially you will not have any kind of web share for purchases, like virtual goods and stuff like that.

Mark: That’s right, yes. So, there won’t be any purchases right from the start, but we have said we really want that to be there. And we know we’re getting feedback from games as well as all sorts of verticals to have that in. So, we can release it at some point in the future.

Interviewer: Where can developers find out more information about the opportunity then, where they can start seeing if their games are going to be compatible in this?

Mike: Off the top of my head, I don’t have the link. Search for Chrome Web Store.

Mark: A nice shortcut I like to use … http://3.ly/webstore and that will go right into the technical descriptions. So, if you really want to get hands-on and start hacking with it, you can do that today. A lot of people don’t realize but the apps are actually there. There is the ability to deploy apps.

The link I just gave is …http://3.ly/webstore. That will send you right over. You can create an app in 10 minutes. You’ll create a little adjacent file and it’ll tell you how to run it with the right version of Chrome.

Interviewer: OK. Thank you very much for your time.