– DRAFT –
Gaming on the Web TPAC breakout session

<dantheman> Present Dan_Moore

Gaming on the Web

tidoust: welcome, I'm Francois working for W3C, M&E champion, including gaming in scope of entertainment part
… structure of this session: history of gaming on the web to kick off the discussion
… we also have remote participants, and want to make this an interactive session so please speak up

Setting the Context

tidoust: want to setup a Gaming activity, be it a workshop or some such

<BarbaraH> Will you share the web gaming software stack and ecosystem? How is changing?

tidoust: 2011 organized games W3C workshop, at that time games on the web were considered "low end"
… some people attending the 2011 workshop are in this room it seems

[sees hands]

... issues at the time of 2011 workshop: the lack of gamepad, fullscreen, orientation lock, no high perf timer, asset loading

... as a by-product of that workshop, created a CG, the first CG ever at W3C!

... CG tried to identify relevant WGs to fix the issues identified

... fast forward today, and all the issues identified have either be addressed of are being worked on in current CGs and WGs

... CG can be considered a success from that perspective

<boaz> the original use case report from the games community group: https://‌docs.google.com/‌document/‌pub?id=1fs1hpZvP05ViEWtaLSmNQUV_PW2jCWS5Oe2GAdBKgl0

... other games on the web activities outside W3C include e.g. Mozilla's Games program, Next Games Conference 2014

Luke: we started Mozilla games program after the 2011 workshop since it was considered a catalyst for finding pain points on the web platform
… such as JS performance, came up with Emscripten, asm.js, pushed this to the limit, and that led us to Wasm
… Wasm is one of the most interesting off-shoots, another WebGL performance performances
… high performance timers, Web Audio, Storage improvements also motivated by games

tidoust: that's one activity, there has been in addition games conferences

?1: we started 2011 our game engine for the Web, issues faced include problems to secure sets(?) [scribe missed the remaining details]
… 80% of users are not game designers, but use our engine (Babylon.js) in other usages

tidoust: I tried to summarize all the technologies that have become part of the web platform in a form of a roadmap for the games on the web

Games on the Web Roadmap

tidoust: the roadmap is devided in different capabilities: performance, data storage, payment & service etc. 7 in total
…

tidoust: this was a starting point to discuss the remaining gaps on the web platform
… what is still needed for games to reach the web platform, what to look for, currently identified gaps: advanced rendering, multiplayer comms, live streaming, esports, ML, asset protection, accessibility, debugging, better multithreading, game streaming, monetization, gesture events etc.

anssik: how native games deal with accessibility?

dom: there's research in that area

<BarbaraH> Where are you getting usages and needs? Are you going to participate in Game developer conferences?

<BarbaraH> Game Developer Conference - https://‌www.gdconf.com/

Bernard: many native games require low latency for multiplayer, gap in WebRTC to port those games to the Web
… native games do ICE optimizations to bring the latency down, also Virtual Reality multiplayer challenging to implement using WebRTC

Boaz: can you elaborate the issues with WebRTC?

Bernard: SDP issues, for solution will need to go talk to IETF and takes multiple years to resolve

tidoust: native game engine developers say WebGL is nice but it is legacy, also the same message heard in the WebGPU breakout session
… another thing, extremely popular in gaming is esports or live streaming
… record yourself playing a game and stream it to a social platforms

Bernard: that is already doable as of today, no gap, latency is a minor issue

MarkW: should HDR graphics be on the list, is it important for games?

anssik: seems modern game consoles do support it

MarkW: latest Windows 10 supports HDR, and there a many monitors with HDR support, HDR graphics available to game consoles but not exposed to the Web

MarkW: wide color gamut is not to be confused with HDR

Barbara: the group would benefit for be connected with game developers, are you involved with GDC
… we're hearing trend in gaming is to be able to move from platform to platform, from PC to mobile

anssik: it seems the Web would address that requirement

Boaz: that's a very good point, any game developers in the room who make games for work?

[hears one]

Boaz: should be interviewing game companies, collecting pain points and use cases, not make duplicate work of WGs

W3C Games Community Group Summit

tidoust: before moving on, any further feedback from Babylon.js?

David: would like to be able to use Wasm (in production?), multithreading challenges

Luke: good news for Wasm, 1st class GC being added, with some out-in could use stricter classes and type checking

David: tried to write Wasm compiler, but we're just a team of 7 people
… not all math functions are not in Wasm

Luke: you can import Math functions

[scribe missed a bunch of discussion]

?2: Can having access to input pointer inside a worker be possible?

David: we are doing particles on GPU, being able to animate particles on one thread would be great, use another thread for collisions etc. sync threads, join threads

?2: pointer events tracking across worker threads would be great

tidoust: any other technical gaps to discuss?

tidoust: should we resume a steering activity for games on the Web?

Barbara: it depends on the priorities of W3C and the Web, if the goal is to meet near native performance, gamers are your hardest audience

Boaz: I agree, this is an important frontier for the Web Platform

tidoust: we need game developers, and especially game engine developers

Boaz: who are Babylon.js users?

David: Chinese companies doing Facebook games, large scale multiplayer online games
… mostly game developers from studies of around 10 people

David: one of the reasons to not go to the Web 4 years ago was the lack of content protection

tidoust: proposed next step: revise CG, organize a workshop
… gauging level of support in the room

[sees heads nodding]

tidoust: workshop would happen at earliest beginning 2019
… why did Mozilla games program stopped?

Luke: initial objectives were accomplished

Alexis: later in 2019 might be better, we'd have WebGPU, WebXR more fleshed out

Boaz: Would it be valuable for this room the use cases be collected and be brought back to you?

?3: having worked as a game developer in the past, development times of games are fast, looking at historical use cases can see how the industry develops

tidoust: in standards there's always tension on being too early and too late

MarkF: any existing discussion on server-side game streaming?

tidoust: that's been identified, to my knowledge not explored

MarkF: possible topic for the workshop to consider

David: as a consumer of the spec would be more than happy to help

tidoust: Bernard, all good?

Bernard: yes, thanks!

tidoust: thank you everyone for participating!