In the times before the internet – which is 25 years old already – single-player was the norm for games. A shared gaming experience usually meant “hot-seat” multiplayer (where players take turn in sitting in front of a computer), or a relatively complicated form of playing on the same screen, usually using either different key sets on a keyboard, or two controllers. With the advent of the global network playing against others became the new norm. And a new breed of games appeared – games that run in a browser window, and can be played on any device. But with the rise of the smartphone these games saw a massive decline.
The rise of the app
After Apple released its first iPhone in 1998, the “app” became the new norm. Apps allowed developers to generate revenues in ways never before seen: through in-app advertising and in-app purchases. They didn’t have to rely on players buying the games themselves anymore. The promise of this new revenue stream, along with the platforms’ urging to build more apps (and attract more users) has averted developers from building platform-independent games, toward “native” apps that need to be downloaded and installed on smartphones. This is sometimes annoying for the player – there can be times when the phone is simply too “full” to accommodate another game, or even a game update – but ultimately players grew accustomed to this new system.
Smartphones are the preferred gaming device of the public, which makes the app the most used form of game deployment today.
Cross-platform is not dead, though
But cross-platform games are not gone. Thanks to HTML5, cross-platform browser games still exist – they are just not as widespread as Flash games were before them. But there is one branch of the gaming industry that relies heavily on HTML5 games to bring players what they need: real money online gaming.
The Red Flush Mobile Casino is one such example. Red Flush is a preferred gaming destination for thousands of players all over the world. Its collection of games is massive – the Red Flush online casino has more than 700 titles for its players to explore – and many of its games run in desktop browsers, too. But, since its games are mostly casual, Red Flush needed a solution for them to reach its players even when they are away from their computers. Thus, the Red Flush Mobile casino came to be: a mobile browser solution with a collection of more than 100 HTML5 games in it.
This mobile gaming platform, which runs on any mobile device with a HTML5-capable web browser, shows that cross-platform games are far from being gone and forgotten. While platform-dependent games are still the norm, cross-platform browser games are here to stay.
