Torque Plugin, the future of Casual Games
May 26th, 2006, By Duncan Gough
This thread, on the dirGames list for Shockwave development, feels like another of those Flash-on-a-PSP annoucements. Like the Xbox Live Arcade, its’ ramifications could be huge.
If there is indeed a viable, working plugin that embeds the Torque Game Engine into Firefox and Internet Explorer on Windows and Mac, then it could signal the start of more browser-based, online games and the end of Director too.
This blog post on Garagegames seems to indicate that work is underway to make this happen. What I find most interesting about this is the implicit acknoweldgement that browser-based gaming is worth pursuing. The majority of Casual Games are downloadable and I’m fiarly convinced that this alone contributes to the poor conversion ratio (1 to 2%). Compare this to a one-click plugin install for a 3D Torque enabled game, I’m be willing to say that this could greatly enhance the money to be made from Casual Games whilst reducing the cost of new customer acquisition, especially as you’re reducing the bandwidth costs from all those players who download your game but don’t go on to pay for it.
I’m quite out of my depth when it comes to the Torque stuff though, I should acknowledge that. Learning more about it has been on my to-do for much too long now, perhaps it’s time I did.
Has anyone got good or bad things to start about the Torque engine? I’d really like to hear more about it drom developers who have written games. I’m interested in the Torque Network Library and Torque 2D stuff too.