We've been looking over some of the numbers for our game Knit Worth on itch.io, and we've been seeing some genuinely surprising results.

TL;DR: our browser plays dwarfs our number of downloads by over 5x!!

While that seems like an absolutely insane disparity, if you think about it, it kind of makes sense. If you only have a Windows download build, here is some of the potential audience you will miss out on:

• Mac Users

• People playing games on their non-personal computers

• People who can't be bothered to download a zip file, extract it, and open up an .exe

• People who are (justifiably) weary of downloading and running .exe files off the Internet

These groups of people are not a small number. In fact, they likely outnumber your original audience by a lot. In the process of downloading and running your game, a potential player can have dozens of reasons or opportunities to stop what they're doing before they even hit your title screen. A WebGL build takes out almost all of those steps. All they have to do is click your game link, hit the "Run Game" button, and bing bang boom, you have a new player!

Don't underestimate the impact that user friction has when getting someone to check your game out!

Don't know how to port to WebGL?

It might be easier than you think! Here's a step-by-step guide:

1. In Unity, go to File->Build Settings
2. In the Platform section of the Build Settings window, select WebGL
3. Go through the regular build process
4. Zip dat stuff up into a .zip file (and only a .zip file!)
5. Go to your itch.io page (or make an itch.io page) and change your Kind of Project to HTML.
6. Upload your .zip file to the page, and specify that it is meant to be "Played in Browser"
7. ...That's it! Now just make sure everything works. :) For a lot of games, it might just be that easy!

A couple of caveats

*Caveat 1: *

A WebGL build is unlikely to run as well as your download build. You can google around to find some quick optimizations you can do, but for the most part your download build will always be superior. However, as long as your WebGL is at least 75% as playable as your download build, the payoff for a larger audience and feedback quantity is absolutely worth it (in our opinion)!

Caveat 2:

We recommend porting to WebGL in order to reach a wider audience and get more feedback. However, the number of ratings you get and the amount of feedback you receive does not necessarily correlate to how good your final results will be! Every Ludum Dare, there are always some games that are just barely above the minimum rating threshold that sweep some of the top spots (often deservedly!).

If you can't port to WebGL for one reason or another, don't fret! You shouldn't be at any sort of disadvantage compared to other games because of it in terms of final results. Unfortunately, it does mean that, due to your game's availability, you likely won't get as much feedback simply due to the wide range of players we have around here.

Caveat 3

Once you put a WebGL build up, prepare for browser plays to start cannibalizing your download numbers. It seems that, even if a player has a compatible machine to download your game, they will more than likely default to the WebGL version to experience your game, even if you have a warning informing them that they may potentially be having an inferior experience (like we have in our game). As long as your okay with this, you will have a much easier time getting people to play your game.

We hope this helps some people out there who are looking to get more feedback for their hard work!

As a friendly note, we, the Keyboard Cowboys, are making a point to play, rate, and comment on every single game that was made by users who were kind enough to give us feedback on Knit Worth. We won't be deterred by a download process and promise to get back to you as soon as we can! We like to be thorough in our feedback giving though, so we appreciate your patience!

'Til next time! :pointright: :cowboy: :pointright: