The second W3C Games CG meetup this year (after the first one about Hyperledger’s MESIG gaming subgroup) was held online on Tuesday, June 27th 2023 - Björn Ritzl was giving a talk about Defold, and then all participants were discussing the future of the group itself.

Björn went through the info about the Defold game engine itself, that the web export is the most popular one (compared to other platforms), showcased some of the most popular games made with the tool, shared the plans for the future, and much more. Check out the full video on the event page, along with the slides and the transcript.

During the second part of the meetup we’ve focused on discussing the revamped goals of our group:

• Listen to web game developers: Find technical gaps and drive towards specifications. Continue to invite web game and engine developers to discuss struggles. Feed the problems back to other W3C groups and browsers – or brainstorm technical solutions.
• Listen to web game publishers: Find monetisation and distribution gaps and drive towards more success. Continue to invite publishers and developers to discuss struggles in monetisation and distribution. Feed the problems back to other W3C groups and browsers – or brainstorm solutions.
• Reach out to non-web game people: Evangelise technologies and business opportunities. Gather information on why they don’t develop or publish for the web. “Not web game developers. I.e. could be web developers who don’t make games or could be game developers who don’t make for the web.” Gather success stories from web game entities and evangelize via videos, blog posts or tweets.

We had great feedback from all the participants that joined the call, some solid points that we can try to expand on:

• consider creating the SaveGame API (although that’s not directly in the charter of the group) that would unify the approach and help game developers and publishers alike
• prepare media resources and marketing plan to invite more participation, especially in the communities of the current active participants
• organize the main page of the W3C Games CG group to show recent activities
• maybe consider focusing on keeping a check on the pulse and heartbeat of the web game scene instead of trying to only solve browser API problems
• talk about what new tech is coming, new business and platform opportunities
• partner with related events

If you have more, please let us know!

Ps. Yes, Björn is wearing a js13kGames 2019 t-shirt.