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GDC Online 11: MocoSpace on the opportunities and challenges of the 'HTML5 gold rush'

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GDC Online 11: MocoSpace on the opportunities and challenges of the 'HTML5 gold rush'
Given it's a social mobile games portal (with 20 million users, mainly in the US), it's no surprise that MocoSpace is bullish about HTML5.

That was underlined at GDC Online with its co-founder and CEO Justin Siegel talking about 'Cashing in on the oncoming HTML5 gold rush'.

"It's better to be an early bird than late to party," he said, pointing out that MocoSpace's own StreetWars took 10 weeks to develop, has 500,000 monthly active users and is generating $20,000 monthly with an IAP conversation rate of over 3 percent.

Baby steps

Yet, HTML5 is still an emerging technology.

Performance remains an issue, although there are well known techniques for optimising both back and front-end. Then there’s the issue of device and browser fragmentation - something HTML5 is designed to overcome, but nevertheless can impact performance.

And, of course, there's no proper way of running multistream audio yet on HTML5.

MocoSpace can help

How this works in terms of MocoSpace's platform was explained by Jim Caralis, who joined the company when it bought his previous company the location-focused social gaming network Geocade.

An important element of this are the relationships MocoSpace has with carriers so it can help thirdparty developers access new distribution channels.

It also has a $2 million developers fund to encourage companies to release titles on its platform, although a caveat is this is a real name network as opposed to the virtual name networks such as DeNA and GREE, which are so popular in Japan.

Interesting, MocoSpace also has Facebook compatibility, and is already supporting Facebook's Spartan HMTL5 platform.
Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.