Opera Unite Could Be The Next Generation Of Turnkey Websites (And Games)

Google wants you to think of their App Engine as a way for developers to build scalable websites that can grow to handle any load. I view it as having the potential to be a simple turnkey way for any user to say, “I want a site that does X,” and have someone install the software to do that on App Engine for them. Then they pay a monthly fee (which covers both Google’s fees and the profit for the developer) and they’ve got a new site to do whatever they wanted. Many people’s software needs are simple and can be easily met with off the shelf software. It’s true of the software on the machine in front of you (you probably use very little custom software and mostly things that are used by huge numbers of other people) and it’s equally true of the Internet.

Today if you wanted to run a PBBG you don’t necessarily have to know how to program or design websites. You can get packaged game software for a fairly small amount of money that will let you setup a “Mafia” game or a handful of other common genre’s. The games are generally pretty crude, setup and customization is still probably more than many people are up to, but you can see where it’s heading. Stick something like Google App Engine in there so the user gets it all setup and running as part of the fee and you’ve improved the status quo massively.

Now Opera (the browser people) have come up with another possible variation on the same idea. They’ve built a web server that comes with their browser. It uses UPnP or their proxy servers to expose software you install locally out to the outside world so you can have something you run locally which will be used by just by you and others you decide to let in. Opera Unite, their name for this innovation, doesn’t have any games yet but it’s not hard at all to imagine someone putting one together.

Think of something as easy to install as add-ins are for Firefox users (you just pick them from a catalog) and a given user has a new game running for him/herself and friends. That sounds pretty damn cool to me. I hope to see the same thing in Firefox and Chrome very soon.

Be Careful When Giving Players Control

There’s an interesting article on Wired about how players, given a chance to create their own missions for other players, quickly started churning out ones where you could grab as much stuff as possible as quickly as possible.

Handed Keys to Kingdom, Gamers Race to Bottom

It reminded me of one of the first things that the people running Ultima Online said years ago at a panel discussion I attended in Austin, “Players are bastards.” I don’t agree with the sentiment and I don’t think the UO developer who said it really believed it either, he was just coming off of a rough time for exploits and problems caused by players in the game. But it’s always wise to stop and think for a second, “What if I wanted to exploit this, how would I do it? Could I do it?” This is important stuff if your PBBG is one where players create content for other players or you’ve ever considered building one where they do.

BBGameZone Is Back

A few weeks ago BBGameZone vanished completely from the Internet. Most of the site was nothing to write about, but the forums were easily the number one resource for people developing or running PBBGs. It was also the site that ran the PBBG contest just last year so it was something of a surprise when the domain expired and it never seemed to come back...

However, it's back now. Apparently the fellow running it before isn't going to be doing so anymore, he will just participate as another user now. But all the forum data is back and the forums are up in a new home at BBGameZone.net. In a few weeks the grace period for renewing the old domain will have expired and we can hope that someone sympathetic to the site will end up with it, in which case the site will be moved back to its old address.

Google Rolls Out Another Language For App Engine

Back in one of my older posts (App Engine Is Going To Become A Better PBBG Host) I wrote about some of the upcoming changes Google is planning for their App Engine. Several of those improvements should be helpful for anyone who wants to try building a PBBG on the web and wants a scalable platform for deploying it.

Today they rolled out a different change for App Engine by releasing an early look at Java on the platform. If you would rather use Java instead of Python, today is your lucky day. I do love me some Java but I can't say I'm a big fan of it for web app development, for that I think Rails is a much better choice. Nevertheless, Java is a massively popular language and a lot of people know it. It was definitely my third choice for them to implement.

Edited 04/09/2008:

It turns out that in addition to the Java rollout (only for the first 10,000 developers to sign up for early access) they also rolled out three new features, chief among them is a cron like capability. Since that is a key need for a lot of PBBGs I thought I'd mention it.

One Feed To Rule Them All

I've created a Yahoo! Pipe that pulls together and sorts nine different PBBG related weblogs. Obviously this one and Building Browsergames are included but so are several others related to other projects out there. The RSS feed for all of them together is this link:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=Lldj4owd3hGSI1RvwjSbTQ&_render=rss


If you go here you can see the construction of the pipe and even copy and make it your own. I would ask that if you do know of some other PBBG related blogs, please either email me or add a comment to this post to let me know about them. I'd like to have a definitive list in this one feed.

Edited

It has been requested that I put the current list in here so here it is:

http://buildingbrowsergames.com/feed/
http://lorbsbg.wordpress.com/feed/
http://openbracket.ca/?feed=rss2
http://www.pbbgblog.com/feed/
http://rangersheck.com/feed/atom.xml
http://blog.forumwarz.com/feed/atom.xml
http://xalthorn.wordpress.com/feed/
http://madgameslab.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
http://www.galaxy-news.net/feed/

Another Aid To Building Better Support For Low/No Vision PBBG Players

Since I already use the excellent Yahoo! UI (YUI) CSS files to help me layout the pages in my game, the news that you can also now embed hints to screen readers with your YUI grid layout code is good news. This article tells how and even has a video example to illustrate how it can give the low or no vision user the ability to flip from section to section more quickly because they can tell the purpose of each area on the page because you can label each one.

Note: Even if you're already using another library to handle JavaScript (e.g. Prototype/Scriptaculous or jQuery) then you can still use YUI's CSS files to clear out browser specific formatting, standardize the appearance of basic tags from one browser to the next, handle font size differences, and layout your page without resorting to tables. It's a great set of files that can save you a ton of time.

Finish

I once started reading the book Getting Things Done but I didn’t finish it. If you think the irony of that statement is lost on me then trust me, it’s not. Finishing things is a lifelong problem for me. I start things and get a great start on them but when they turn plodding and hard, it’s really tough for me to power through. Plus, there’s always some other neat new idea or technology to play with that I could make a lot of progress with quickly before it started to get difficult.

Then there’s just basic fears about success and failure that haunt me. What if I build something and it’s successful but not successful enough. I might build two or three games and have a lot of extra work to do supporting them but not be able to leave my current job. Or, what if I build it and nobody comes? With LOL.com that wasn’t a problem, we knew people would come simply because of the URL it sits on. But people might show up to a beta game, play for five minutes and then leave for good. In fact, I’m sure lots will. If you stop and think about stuff like that you can paralyze yourself enough that you never get anything done on that side project. Instead you go hit your favorite site again to see if anybody posted something new or watch a cool TV show you like, etc.

With all that said, here’s what I’ve learned over the years:

• Build something you are truly interested in. Don’t build something just because there’s an empty niche somewhere and you realize you have the skills necessary to fill it. I have actually done that. I built a website because there wasn’t a site like it and I thought people would need it, then I realized I had zero interest in maintaining that site.
• If you do care about it, never ever quit. You may think that some other site has you beat completely, but you may be able to just outlast them. The amateur ones are run by people who thought it would be cool, enjoy it for a while, and then don’t want anything to do with it again. It’s the online equivalent of buying a boat. The commercial ones are often created by people with no great love of the topic (see my point above) and they often seem to run out of money.
• Know why you are doing something. Don’t do stuff just because you think it would be cool. I tried podcasting and it was a mistake. I was OK at it, god knows I’m as opinionated as hell, but I didn’t have any reason to do it. There wasn’t anything I was promoting or selling and there was no concentrated focus for the show. If I were to do it today there’s no question but that it would be a show about PBBGs and I could actually make some sense out of it by promoting them, reviewing them, and plugging the ones I work on. So maybe I’ll do it again some day, but before I do, I’ll know why I’m doing it.
• Only work on one new project at a time. You can still keep blogging, you can still go back and make improvements to an existing project while you work on the new one. But don’t start another new project while you’re working on the current one. I think it’s OK to think about it and make some notes for your next project, but don’t let it side track you. And definitely don’t start building anything for it until you’ve reached a usable state for your current project.
• Break it down, break it down. This is one thing I did learn from what I read in Getting Things Done. Often my to-do lists read like this: “Build Operation To Steal Secrets From An Opponent’s Lair”. OK, that’s something Big Villain needs alright but how long is that going to take? How big is it? It’s not really a to-do item at all, it’s really more of a project in itself and it needs to be broken down into a series of smaller to-do items that will each take an hour or less to accomplish. I actually shoot for smaller items that I think can be done in 15 minutes. Then I am more likely to do one “real quick” when I think about it. Often I find I’ve done two or three and without realizing it I’ve made some real progress.

Learn from the many mistakes I’ve made and you will actually get your projects to the finish line. I may be crawling along with Big Villain right now, but “slow and steady wins the race”.