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Building Games for HTML5, Not with HTML5
Rather than trying to emulate native mobile games with HTML5, we as developers need to develop games specifically for HTML5 – taking advantage of the unique offering it brings.
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In the thousands of HTML5 games I’ve seen and played, the biggest downer is that so many are just using “HTML5″ as an alternative way to create either “mobile” or “Flash” games. The problem with that approach is HTML5 is neither Flash nor a native mobile language. Building a game with HTML5 just to put it in the iOS and Android app stores is pointless, you’re going to have a game that performs worse than it would with Unity or Adobe AIR. Rather than trying to emulate native mobile games with HTML5, we as developers need to develop games specifically for HTML5 – taking advantage of the unique offering it brings.
Past Successes
Often times the easiest way to drill home a point is to analyze historical examples. Let’s look at two of the biggest names in gaming in the past 5 years, and how they got where they are by building for the platform.
Facebook → Zynga
![FarmVille FarmVille](http://clay.io/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/farmville2-300x143.png?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Zynga blew up to a $9 billion dollar evaluation because it completely understood the Facebook platform and how to effectively distribute and monetize their games through it.
There were plenty of good games on Facebook before Zynga Poker and FarmVille… heck, there was even Farm Town