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austinhallock

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freeroam.app 7y ago

Show HN: FreeRoam – a tool for finding public campgrounds

austinhallock
1pts0
gaypride.clay.io 11y ago

Gay Pride: the game - in honor of today's Supreme Court decision

austinhallock
4pts4
highscalability.com 11y ago

How Clay.io built their 10x architecture with AWS, Docker, HAProxy and lots more

austinhallock
3pts0
venturebeat.com 11y ago

Clay.io's $550K funding taps into the growth of games on messaging apps

austinhallock
4pts0
clay.io 12y ago

32 mobile web games built by students

austinhallock
1pts0
austinhallock.com 12y ago

The Rise of the Mobile Web

austinhallock
23pts3
pando.com 12y ago

From Flappy Bird clones to 2048, mobile web games are here to disrupt app stores

austinhallock
14pts3
techcrunch.com 12y ago

Banter Debuts Anonymous Social Network Focusing On Interests, Not Confessions

austinhallock
4pts1
austinhallock.com 12y ago

Near Misses

austinhallock
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clay.io 12y ago

HTML5 Game Dev Competition for Students – sponsored by Mozilla, GitHub

austinhallock
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clay.io 12y ago

HTML5 Flappy Bird Clones (12 and counting...)

austinhallock
2pts1
gamasutra.com 12y ago

Some of the Best HTML5 Games from 2013

austinhallock
53pts23
austinhallock.com 12y ago

21st Century Carol of the Bells

austinhallock
1pts0
treasurearena.clay.io 12y ago

Treasure Arena - HTML5 Online Battle-Arena

austinhallock
1pts0
techzette.com 12y ago

Hackathons: A Factory of Tomorrow's Factories

austinhallock
5pts2
air.mozilla.org 12y ago

Mozilla's WebFWD Accelerator Demo Day Live Stream

austinhallock
5pts0
clay.io 12y ago

Stepping Stones for HTML5 to be Commercially Viable for Games

austinhallock
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clay.io 12y ago

Building Games for HTML5, Not with HTML5

austinhallock
44pts17
clay.io 12y ago

Standout HTML5 Games so far in 2013

austinhallock
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webfwd.tumblr.com 13y ago

The latest batch of companies announced for Mozilla's WebFWD accelerator

austinhallock
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austinhallock.com 13y ago

On Single Founders

austinhallock
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www.gamasutra.com 13y ago

HTML5 For Game Studios

austinhallock
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www.gamasutra.com 13y ago

Transitioning From Flash to HTML5: Tools for Game Developers

austinhallock
4pts0
clay.io 13y ago

An Appeal to Google: Make ".io" a gccTLD

austinhallock
138pts121
html5gameengine.com 13y ago

Show HN: Weekend project - HTML5 Game Engines: which is right for you?

austinhallock
75pts19
austinhallock.com 13y ago

Analogizing Ethernet and HTML5

austinhallock
1pts0
venturebeat.com 13y ago

Analyzing the Market of HTML5 Games

austinhallock
10pts0
www.gamasutra.com 13y ago

Lessons Learned Running an HTML5 Game Competition for Students

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clay.io 13y ago

HTML5 Games Developed By Students in One Month for "Got Game?"

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46pts6
clay.io 13y ago

HTML5 Game Dev Competition for Students - sponsored by Mozilla, GitHub

austinhallock
31pts13
Zop 11 years ago

My high score is 353. The key is to connect your lines (eg making a square), which is way quicker than trying to do a long line.

Thanks for pointing out the screen resolution and browser history things.

It has definitely been an up-hill battle for Firefox OS trying to gain market share, but I think everyone (including Mozilla) expected that. Having played with one of their earlier test units and the newer Firefox Flame with FFOS 2.0, it has come a long way. Even our Android-obsessed designer loves the Flame.

It's a tough situation to be in where they need to improve the quality of the ecosystem, but need users to convince the big-wig devs to developer for the OS. The total user numbers we've seen from them is certainly better than we expected, but still too small to convince a major developer to build for Firefox OS on numbers alone.

If their platform wasn't the web, I'm not sure they'd have much of a chance at success, but being able to convince a developer the values of building for the web is much easier than building for a fairly new mobile OS.

Clay.io - http://clay.io - San Francisco, CA Hiring Full-Stack Engineers. Shoot me an email: austin@clay.io

  ===================
  What we're building
  ===================
We're building Steam for mobile games - competing with the app stores to provide a better way to discover games on mobile. By leveraging the web we reduce the friction between discovery and gameplay, which we think is key in reaching the next level of viral games.
  ==============
  Where we're at
  ==============
Our team is small, and our challenges great. Last month we had 5 million+ sessions, running on 15+ servers, with just 2 engineers (myself included).

See http://stackshare.io/clay-io/clay-io for our stack and to get a better feel for the code we write see https://github.com/claydotio/clay-mobile

  =========
  Our Stack
  =========
Node.js, CoffeeScript, Docker, Zorium.js, Gulp, Ansible, MongoDB, MySQL, ...

Clay.io - http://clay.io - San Francisco, CA

Hiring Full-Stack Engineers. Shoot me an email: austin@clay.io

  ===================
  What we're building
  ===================
We're building Steam for casual mobile games - competing with the app stores to provide a better way to discover games on mobile. The approach we're taking focuses on mobile web games - games people can access immediately without the added friction of installing them in an app store.
  ==============
  Where we're at
  ==============
Small team of 3, with large audience of 5,000,000+ users to push code to. https://github.com/claydotio/clay-mobile for general idea of the quality of code we write.
  =========
  Our Stack
  =========
Node.js, CoffeeScript, Docker, Zorium.js, Gulp, Ansible, MongoDB, MySQL, ...

Clay.io - http://clay.io - San Francisco, CA

Hiring Full-Stack Engineers. Shoot me an email: austin@clay.io

  ===================
  What we're building
  ===================
We're building Steam for casual mobile games - competing with the app stores to provide a better way to discover games on mobile. The approach we're taking focuses on mobile web games - games people can access immediately without the added friction of installing them in an app store.
  ==============
  Where we're at
  ==============
Small team of 3, with large audience of 5,000,000+ users to push code to. https://github.com/claydotio/clay-mobile for general idea of the quality of code we write.
  =========
  Our Stack
  =========
Node.js, CoffeeScript, Docker, Mithril.js, Gulp, Ansible, MongoDB, MySQL, ...

Clay.io - http://clay.io - San Francisco, CA

Hiring Full-Stack Engineers. Shoot me an email: austin@clay.io

  ===================
  What we're building
  ===================
We're building Steam for casual mobile games - competing with the app stores to provide a better way to discover games on mobile.

The approach we're taking focuses on mobile web games - games people can access immediately without the added friction of installing them in an app store.

  ==============
  Where we're at
  ==============
Small team of 3, with large audience of 4,000,000+ users to push code to. https://github.com/claydotio/clay-mobile for general idea of the quality of code we write.
  =========
  Our Stack
  =========
Node.js, CoffeeScript, Docker, Mithril.js, Gulp, Ansible, MongoDB, MySQL, ...

Clay.io - http://clay.io - San Francisco, CA

Hiring Full-Stack Engineers. Shoot me an email: austin@clay.io

  ===================
  What we're building
  ===================
We're building Steam for casual mobile games - competing with the app stores to provide a better way to discover games on mobile.

The approach we're taking focuses on mobile web games - games people can access immediately without the added friction of installing them in an app store.

  ==============
  Where we're at
  ==============
Small team of 3, with large audience of 4,000,000+ users to push code to. https://github.com/claydotio/clay-mobile for general idea of the quality of code we write.
  =========
  Our Stack
  =========
Node.js, CoffeeScript, Docker, Mithril.js, Gulp, Ansible, MongoDB, MySQL, ...
[dead] 12 years ago

Clay.io - http://clay.io - San Francisco, CA

Hiring Full-Stack Engineers. Shoot me an email: austin@clay.io

  ===================
  What we're building
  ===================
We're building Steam for casual mobile games - competing with the app stores to provide a better way to discover games on mobile.

The approach we're taking focuses on mobile web games - games people can access immediately without the added friction of installing them in an app store.

  ==============
  Where we're at
  ==============
Small team of 3, with large audience of 4,000,000+ users to push code to. https://github.com/claydotio/clay-mobile for general idea of the quality of code we write.
  =========
  Our Stack
  =========
Node.js, CoffeeScript, Docker, Mithril.js, Gulp, Ansible, MongoDB, MySQL, ...

Clay.io is hiring a full-stack engineer that loves games. This is someone we'll eventually want to shift toward a role of VP of Engineering as we expand the team.

Shoot me an email: austin@clay.io

About Us -------- We're redefining gaming on mobile. The primary means of discovery for games is through the app stores, which we think is a bad approach... There should be a Steam equivalent on mobile and that's what we're working on. We're already reaching 4 million people every month and just getting started.

We're a small team with a huge passion for games. We're all technical and big fans of open source, so a good chunk of what you write will be public on GitHub.

Our Stack --------- Node.js, CoffeeScript, MySQL, MongoDB, HTML5, Ansible, Docker, Gulp, ...

Openness is still there in the examples of Kik, Twitter and Facebook as new 'browsers' - though less-so with Twitter and Facebook. With Twitter and Facebook you're limited to starting points of links friends post. With something like Kik, you can access any site just like you would in a traditional browser, but it improves 1) the poor retention mobile web generally has and 2) distribution (sharing links has less friction).

People are using apps instead of the web for certain services because they're easier to find (both initially, and for subsequent uses), easier to use, and more polished. The point is, this is all changing in favor of mobile web. Mobile apps can become just as easy to use and have close to the same level of polish, but more importantly, they can become easier to discover. Flappy Bird was successful because of social media, not discovery directly from the app store - the app store just added more friction.

Retention is the biggest potential point of failure for mobile web, and that's something I think Kik has solved pretty well. There are other examples of good solutions for this (eg Firefox OS), but none of them have enough traction to serve as a good proof-point.

I noticed we had quite a few Flappy Bird clone submissions varying from direct clones to cool variations. I'm sure there are plenty more HTML5 versions of the game out there as well - these were just the ones developers submitted to Clay.io. A few have already made their round on HN.

It's interesting to see how the indie scene and game devs in general react to something like Flappy Bird.

A lot of these unfortunately don't work on mobile devices :/ I'm working to try and get more folks serious about developing for the mobile web - but it is a much more difficult task than developing for desktop-only.

It's a massively multiplayer bombmerman, so a clone with a lot of cool stuff added to it. My writing tends to have a lot of fluff, so sorry for the extra bulk :)

The point I was trying to make is Bombermine is somewhat of a mix between a website and a game, and it works well for it.

For performance you're better of with Unity. For distribution you're better off with HTML5. You can get in the app stores & have distribution on the mobile web, have the game instantly playable in webviews, etc...

I think it will affect the supply rather than the demand of HTML5 games initially. Firefox OS has a very small market share in comparison to iOS and Android so while there are more folks playing HTML5 games, it isn't a huge amount. However, big name companies backing HTML5 like Mozilla with Firefox OS and Samsung/Intel with Tizen, they're doing their best to get popular games ported over to HTML5, as well as more new content.

For example, the Tizen App Challenge (https://developer.tizen.org/contests/tizen-app-challenge) is offering some pretty large prizes for HTML5 apps/games.

This comment is a bit off topic as the post isn't about Clay.io, rather games in general.

However, to answer your question, we take a 20% cut on any transactions made through selling games or our in-game payments API. If you're using our Advertising API we take 10-30% (depending on where the game is being played). Everything else (leaderboards, achievements, etc...) is free to use. This info is displayed here: http://clay.io/docs

The point I'm trying to make there is consumers can still find your game through those apps like WeChat, and through shared links on Facebook, Twitter, etc... The same way people typically find and consume other forms of content.

What needs some work is making those games stickier in the sense that the person will play it again. That requires saving it to the home screen which probably not enough people are familiar with - and is a bit of a pain on Android.

I like the approach Firefox OS has taken with saving/installing apps and hopefully Apple and Google follow suit. As is, I think iOS's "Add to Home Screen" is fine. Android's like I said, could be improved.

The other thing that needs a bit of work is HTML5 performance in the webview. On iOS at least, game's don't perform as well as when they are played in Safari (since the webview doesn't use the Nitro JS engine) - hopefully that changes soon.