Ahead of PC Connects London on January 22nd and 23rd, we have been speaking to some of the wonderful speakers who are going to be sharing their insight at the show.
Ashley Gullen of Scirra is going to be talking about the state of HTML5 tech in 2018 as part of our PC Games University track on the Tuesday morning. He was kind enough to sit down with us to tell us a bit more
Tell us a bit about who you are and what you do
I'm Ashley, the founder of Scirra. We build Construct 3, software that allows anyone to build their own games. It also runs in the browser, which we think is pretty cool. We're really in to web tech.
What are you going to be talking about at PC Connects London 2018?
HTML5 games technology in 2018. Things have come on a long way. And as ever there are some exciting developments on the horizon. I've got a lot of experience working with web technology and HTML5 games over the years, and I think I'm in a good position to talk about the bleeding-edge of HTML5 games tech.
What was your favourite PC game from 2017 and why?
Probably Sonic Mania, because I'm a sucker for nostalgia.
What do you think are going to be the biggest trends and releases of 2018 for PC?
I'd like to see more gaming happening on the web, but I think really the main obstacle is the fact everyone gets games off platforms like Steam or the various app stores. So even if the web has the technical capability to run awesome games, the fact everyone wants to publish them to stores will probably override that. Still, I think Steam is ripe for disruption - perhaps the web could play a part in that.
What are you most excited for in the PC games market right now?
The rise of indie games. There are tons of amazing and super creative games out there made by indie devs. Many platforms are also making it easier than ever to publish to them. For example, Steam Direct, Greenlight, makes it way easier for individuals to publish to Steam. Even the Xbox One is opening up with ID@Xbox and the Creator's Program, and Microsoft has done some interesting work with making those cross-compatible with Windows 10 too. Hopefully this is just the beginning.
