Ranger Sheck's Blog

Today I learned a new acronym: PBBG. Persistent Browser-Based Game. Acronyms are great because they are these kind of self-importing entities that have the potential to carve something substantial into the world’s vocabulary. Just by the very act of instantiating a new acronym, you’ve taken the first step towards establishment, acceptance, and eventually, household knowledge.

Ok, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but one thing you can say about an acronym – the subject of an acronym is being talked about enough and with enough consistency to warrant abbreviation.

I’m here to embrace PBBG. I happen to be the sole developer of a PBBG (a label I applied just today, of course) called Pioneers of Aethora (more about that later). It’s actually an extreme convenience for this acronym to come along. I’ve been googling about, trying to find suitable testers for my game, and lemme tell ya – it’s hard to nail down what a PBBG is. You’ve got your web-based games, probably 99% of which are Flash-based and are most definitely not persistent (unless you count scoreboards). Then there’s “online RPGs”, which typically lands you in MMORPG-dreaming land. Or you can try “Indie games”, which will probably help you find some great sites and forums, but I’ve noticed that’s these places are usually looking at downloadable/installable games (they’re usually receptive to web-based games to some degree, but it’s not their focus). Lastly, trying to search on anything too generic with “rpg” in it drums up a whole lotta stuff about Pen and Paper RPGs (including independently produced P&P RPGs, which I would have found extremely cool at one time).

So what exactly is a PBBG? Well, there’s a definition at http://pbbg.com/ that’s pretty good. Essentially, we’re talking a game that you play in your browser; as in no installable/executable. But it’s not one of these puzzle/casual/action/arcade kinds of games where you play, get a score, try to beat your score, get addicted, try to beat everyone else’s score, etc. Instead, the game is persistent. Typically, this means it’s going to be a role-playing game of some kind. You create a character (or characters, or a kingdom, or a pet monster), you play a little, you go away, you come back tomorrow and pick up where you left off.

It’s the pretty standard concept behind an RPG, but I’m glad someone created this acronym to distinguish these browser-based RPGs from other web-based games, and as well from non-browser based “online/multiplayer” RPGs.

It’s not just the name, or the acronym, however, that makes me happy about this; it’s the fact that we’re witnessing a new gaming genre being established. Sure, it may be yet another spinoff or sub-genre of some pre-existing concepts, but the scaffolding for this PBBG genre has some very unique and exciting characteristics. The last couple years have been all about Web 2.0, and while it’s hard to distinguish hype from reality, there are aspects of Web 2.0 that lend themselves very nicely to web-based gaming.

Let’s consider some of the hurdles an independent game developer faces when constructing a game.

• UI development. Personally, I’ve started work on a few games myself that began as text-based, and when it came time to start adding a graphical interface, well… that just steepened my learning curve a bit, didn’t it? With a web-based game, you can do a hellavalotta presentation with HTML and CSS, and when you need to, javascript can fill in the cracks.
• Data retention. Serializing classes and writing them to files, reading them later, trying to keep them indexed, etc. I never got very far with that part either. With a PBBG, you’re most likely developing with a language that has built-in hooks into any database you could think of (not to mention memory caching options).
• Networking. I never got this far with any of my games. I had a lot of spectacular plans, lemme tell ya, but it wasn’t gonna happen. Obviously, not an issue in PBBGs – you get the networking for free.

There’s probably other stuff I’m not thinking of. All this PBBG talk makes me think there are others out there just like me – big aspirations for developing a game independently, but too many obstacles. Now I’ve got this game that’s downright playable. The progress of web technology has given us a new platform, a new sandbox to play in, where our unrealistic and perpetually unfinished projects can get closer to actuality. Just like the youtubers who suddenly discovered that they too could film a video and share it with thousands of people, we’re realizing that we can develop our own multiplayer, networked, persistent games.

And we don’t have to use C. Or C++. Or C#. Or (as Q-Bert would say) C#$%^&.

Have Kingdom of Loathing and Neopets paved the way for a gaming revolution? Or just another cool acronym? Here’s hoping it’s both.