I've been working on developing some new ideas that fall in the web-based casual game area. The problem for me is that most often casual games are built on Flash and fit into a certain business model. I've also read that the budget for the typical casual game on the order of $100,000. I tried to find a source for that figure, but I think it was at CNN and the closest I can come now is a review for a few casual games published just yesterday that bizarrely talks about three games available "on the net" but with no link. CNN doesn't get this whole "hypertext" thing apparently. Without giving away too many critical business secrets about the hordes of developers in the Late Night PC web-gaming division, we don't do Flash and we don't have $100,000 for a game. Not doing Flash isn't a rule, it's just not hip or cutting-edge enough. It doesn't garner all that cool open source love like SVG, XUL, Ajax and Javascript do. The not having $100,000 for a game isn't because we can't afford it, it's just that we're not willing to cut into the Latte Budget this month. Really, Jeff and I have been debating some framework ideas that build on accessible web standards, while still trying to pop out some fun playable experiments. Jeff's had a couple of them, I've got one tutorial up so far. So this all comes back to the Game Developers Conference, of course, and the three roundtables that Brian Robbins will be running. The roundtable sessions all focus on different aspects of web-based games. They'll cover Business Models, Community Issues and Production & Design. While all three topics are important to me, I don't know how much I have to contribute in a roundtable setting. I've never done the roundtable thing before and I'm not sure how it's going to go. I feel the most comfortable putting myself in the Intended Audience for the Production & Design session, but I know that being pushed out of your comfort zone can be a huge chance for growth. That and I have to see what will fit in the already over packed schedule. The summary for the session on business models mentions "business models of the past that are making a comeback." I believe that Brian is really on to something there. A lot of activity that's happening on the web today is in areas that were predicted during the bubble. They were just expected to come about a lot sooner than they have. People are now willing to pay for content at some online services. Web page feeds and Live bookmarks aren't that much different in purpose than so-called "push content" from years ago. Web-based enterprise applications are used for meaningful and mission critical purposes. These are just off the top of my head. If this round table dredges up some business models that flopped four years ago, they could hit on next year's new hotness. I'd really kick myself for missing out on that million-dollar idea... Community Issues sounds less enticing than the other two. That's because a user community is hard to build, takes a long time to really solidify and is hard or impossible to truly understand. Building community is also critical to success in many genres of online gaming. There are members of the community and there are visitors. You have to balance the needs of both so that visitors feel welcome and end up wanting to join the community. A community that is too tight-knit, where no one outside has a chance of ever getting the in-jokes, can turn off newcomers and make your site stagnate. On the other hand a community that has no jargon of it's own or traditions won't have the feeling of a community at all. That's just a bunch of surfers that stop by. The balance between user ownership and new user adoption isn't easy to get right and getting it wrong can be very expensive. Production & Design is where I feel comfortable because it sounds like it's just about the technology. These are issues I Get. I can deal with site design issues, security considerations, software stack choices, code reusability and maintainability concerns and all that fun stuff. Laying out the design, choosing technologies, writing code and pushing the make art button are all the things that draw me toward the casual game industry. These are the initial reasons that making web-based games is exciting to me. This roundtable could be a lot of fun. So what it comes down to sounds like a matter of where I can contribute from my own experience and where I can get some ideas that will help me grow this enterprise. I also have to decide just how far out of my shell I really want to crawl. This post is part of a series describing some of the prep work Jeff and I have done to get ready for the GDC this year. Have a look through our unofficial preview of GDC 2006 sessions to get a feel for what to expect, along with pointers into the official site.