Should I learn to develop for the web or desktop?

Question

Lately, I've been wanting to learn programming to be able to hopefully create video games (mostly just small, 2d games). I've been looking into learning C++ via books and online resources, but then I thought about web development with HTML5/CSS/JS. I like the idea of being able to run my games in the browser for anyone to easily access. But what will be worth it overall? Are web apps growing increasingly popular (Are web apps slowly dominating over desktop apps)? Are we headed into that direction or not? Which has the greater advantage? Which will be better in the long run? Sorry for the rant of questions. Just some things I thought I might ask. -- What kind of development should I get into and why? Thanks is advance. :)

Answer 1

If you need high-performance graphics, then desktop is probably the way to go, though some JS is pretty darn good (look at processing.js for example)



Mobile and "cloud" are the current wave, so if you can make your games work in the browser and on a mobile platform - both Android and iOS support web/browser based apps - you've done well.



Although there are many good HTML5 examples out there, I think this one is a good one:

http://bejeweled.popcap.com/html5/0.9.12.9490/html5/Bejeweled.html



While the code is minified, you can get an idea of where to start using the canvas.

Answer 2

The HTML5 spec is wonderful for developing games in, and web apps are slowly overtaking desktop applications, they're easier to develop and are cross-platform without any extra code.

Answer 3

You should look into Java Programming (not Javascript). It's actually kind of a mixture between the two. You can develop software on your computer with Java. For instance, you could make a Web Browser with it. It's the biggest programming language on the market right now because it's used almost exclusively for cellphone applications. It's also a very popular for it's browser based games. You can even make webpages out of it using Java Server Pages and Java Servlets.



It's kind of similar to Flash. Although I would say Java is a lot better because most phones don't support flash. Also, I don't think Flash is as powerful.



It is also very

Answer 4

Many online games are built with HTML5 or Flash, but you will need a framework of HTML to build the apps in.