Check out the report of the workshop.

What is the purpose of this workshop?

The primary goal of the workshop is to bring together browser vendors, game engines developers, games developers, game distributors, and device manufacturers to enrich the Open Web Platform with additional technologies for games, including action, casual, first-person shooter (FPS), multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), massively multiplayer online role-playing (MMORPG), sports, and Virtual Reality / Augmented Reality (VR/AR) games.

The secondary goals of the workshop are as follows:

  • Understand how games can leverage the power of the Web as a social platform for discovery and sharing (e.g. through live streaming);
  • Understand how browser-based interactions fit within games;
  • Identify mechanisms, guidelines and gaps related to the accessibility and internationalization of games on the Web;
  • Identify business constraints and technical gaps for distributing games on the Web;
  • Evaluate the opportunities for standardization of APIs and formats that would ease the development of games on the Web.

We won't just be listening to presentations. We will be actively participating in breakout sessions and working discussions covering topics identified as relevant to the participants.

Which topics will be covered?

  • How can game developers render stunning 3D graphics in real-time on the Web? WebGL 1.0 is supported everywhere, WebGL 2.0 on most systems. Meanwhile, a new generation of graphic platforms has been developed (Vulkan, Metal, Direct3D 12) and work on a common Web GPU API for these platforms has started in the GPU for the Web Community Group. What are high-priority features that AAA games need? Under what timeline should these features be developed for the Web platform not to fall behind?
  • The Web platform has limited support for multithreading operations through Workers. How can games efficiently spread CPU intensive operations across CPU cores while maintaining complex hierarchical structures such as octrees? How can they leverage OffscreenCanvas efficiently? What are plans to re-enable SharedArrayBuffer across platforms, so that games may share memory across workers and use atomic operations to manage memory accesses?
  • What additional WebAssembly features would make the Web a better build target for game engines that use high-level programming languages such as C++/C#/Rust? How to create efficient and easy to debug games on the Web?
  • Similarly, what additional WebAssembly, Web IDL or HTML features are necessary to provide WebAssembly with high-performance bindings to new and existing Web APIs defined in Web IDL to ease integration with hardware inputs/outputs exposed on the Web and create hybrid WebAssembly/JavaScript game engines?
  • What improvements to Web streaming technologies are needed for cloud gaming?
  • How can game input APIs be extended to detect keys' physical locations on a game controller, support advanced controller features (LEDs, vibration, screen), and the long tail of game-specific controllers (guitars, pedals, wheels, dancing pads, etc.)? Are there internationalization issues related to the position and/or labels of buttons on game controllers?
  • How can the Web Audio API and related APIs (WebRTC, WebXR) be improved/used to integrate music/sound effects in games or develop "music games" easily? How to take benefit of new audio input devices, spatialized speakers of VR headsets? How to handle large assets of sound samples, use generative music, port existing audio engines and reuse existing audio plugins?
  • Can usual game monetization schemes (game purchase, in-game microtransactions, subscriptions, ads) be used in Web games, especially in games that need to run offline?
  • What mechanisms may allow game developers to detect Devtools exploration, extraction or tampering with of game assets (models, code logic)? Can game assets be protected from such actions?
  • A key promise of the Web is that applications do not need to be installed, but how can games load and store hundreds of MB of assets in the background to ensure a smooth user experience right from launch time? Conversely, how best to package and distribute games for offline execution?
  • What capabilities —APIs, semantics, techniques for rendering, processing, personalization, customization, interoperability, etc.— can developers leverage to ensure accessibility of games even when the code needs to plug into opaque low-level input/output technologies? Are there internationalization considerations?

References

Please submit a pull request or raise an issue on GitHub to suggest further workshop topics. You may also email François Daoust <fd@w3.org>.

How can I attend?

Attendance is free for all invited participants and is open to the public, whether or not W3C members.

If you wish to express interest in attending, please fill out the registration form. We want to fill the room with people with practical experience with authoring and distributing games, and with people involved in relevant Web technologies and their standardization.

Because the venue can only accommodate so many people, you must receive an acceptance email in order to attend. Also, be sure to keep an eye on these important dates.

On top of registration, we encourage you to suggest a specific topic for discussion at the workshop by submitting a position statement.

Our aim is to get a diversity of attendees from a variety of industries and communities, including:

  • Game engines developers,
  • Game developers,
  • Game distributors,
  • Game devices manufacturers (e.g. gamepads, VR/AR headsets),
  • Experts in relevant technologies (e.g. WebGPU, WebAssembly, WebXR, WebRTC, Gamepad, Web Audio),
  • Experts in challenges and opportunities of games for people with disabilities,
  • Browser vendors.

This workshop, as other W3C meetings, operates under its Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

How can I suggest a presentation?

This is a workshop, not a conference. Presentations will be short, with topics suggested by submissions and decided by the program committee. Our goal is to actively discuss topics, not to watch presentations.

In order to facilitate informed discussion, we encourage attendees to read the accepted topics prior to attending the workshop.

If you wish to present on a topic, you can send a position statement to the Program Committee at <team-games-submission@w3.org> by the deadline (see important dates). Our program committee will review the input provided, and select the most relevant topics and perspectives.

A good position statement should be a few paragraphs long and include:

  • Your background on games and/or Web technologies;
  • Which topic you would like to lead discussion on;
  • Links to related supporting resources;
  • Optionally, other topics you think the workshop should cover.

Position statements must be in English, preferably in HTML or plain-text format. Images should be included inline in HTML using base64-encoded data URIs. You may include multiple topics, but we ask that each person submit only a single coherent position statement. The position statement and the input provided at registration time (e.g. bio, goals, interests) will be published and linked to from this workshop page.

What is W3C?

W3C is a voluntary standards consortium that convenes companies and communities to help structure productive discussions around existing and emerging technologies, and offers a Royalty-Free patent framework for Web Recommendations. We focus primarily on client-side (browser) technologies, and also have a mature history of vocabulary (or “ontology”) development. W3C develops work based on the priorities of our members and our community.

Program

Program Committee

Chair

Committee

Host

Microsoft

Microsoft logo

Sponsors

Platinum sponsors

Facebook gaming