Game development

Welcome to the MDN game development center! In this area of the site, we provide resources for web developers wanting to develop games. You will find many useful tutorials and technique articles in the main menu on the left, so feel free to explore.

We've also included a reference section so you can easily find information about all the most common APIs used in game development.

Anatomy of a video game

This article looks at the anatomy and workflow of the average video game from a technical point of view, in terms of how the main loop should run. It helps beginners to modern game development understand what is required when building a game and how web standards like JavaScript lend themselves as tools. Experienced game programmers who are new to web development could also benefit, too.

Introduction to game development for the Web

The modern web has quickly become a viable platform not only for creating stunning, high quality games, but also for distributing those games. This article introduces you to the advantages of using the Web as a game platform, and the technologies that make it possible.

Publishing games

HTML games have a huge advantage over native in terms of publishing and distribution — you have the freedom of distribution, promotion and monetization of your game on the Web, rather than each version being locked into a single store controlled by one company. You can benefit from the web being truly multiplatform. This series of articles looks at the options you have when you want to publish and distribute your game, and earn something out of it while you wait for it to become famous.

Techniques for game development

This page lists essential core techniques for anyone wanting to develop games using open web technologies.

Tools for game development

On this page, you can find links to our game development tools articles, which eventually aim to cover frameworks, compilers, and debugging tools.

Tutorials

This page contains multiple tutorial series that highlight different workflows for effectively creating different types of web games.

For a list of web game examples, see our list of Tutorials.

Build New Games

A collaborative site featuring a large number of open web game development tutorials. Has not been very active recently, but still holds some nice resources.

Creative JS

A collection of impressive JavaScript techniques and experiments, not specific to games, but helpful nonetheless. Has not been very active recently, but still holds some nice resources.

Game Programming Patterns

An online book, written by Bob Nystrom, which discusses programming patterns in the context of game development with the aim of helping game developers produce more effective and efficient code.

Gamedev.js Weekly

Weekly newsletter about HTML game development, sent every Friday. Contains the latest articles, tutorials, tools, and resources.

HTML5 Game Engine

List of the most popular HTML game frameworks along with their rating, features and samples.

Tuts+ Game Development

Tutorials and articles about game development in general.

HTML5 Gamedev Starter

Starter for the new game developers, a curated list of links to various useful resources around the web.

js13kGames

JavaScript coding competition for HTML game developers with the file size limit set to 13 kilobytes. All the submitted games are available in a readable form on GitHub.

Mozilla Hacks Blog

Games category on the Mozilla Hacks blog containing interesting gamedev related articles.

Games section on wiki.mozilla.org

A wiki page with information about Mozilla's involvement in platform games.