If these statements came from someone whose company developed mobile games that really pushed the envelope and that were groundbreakingly innovative, I'd be able to relate a little bit better to the point. But the games they make aren't "We produce ?wow.?". They are mobile/FB standard fare and have been done by others too, before and after.

It's not that their games are terrible, but he makes it sound like they put out stuff that's bleeding cutting edge and that sets standards for the future, and thus requires a highly specialized approach and an extremely-close-to-the-hardware engine. I don't see this as being the case.

Then again, this gets a lot more attention than just embracing HTML5's future. :)

Well, I think "no programming" is more clear to most non-programmers than "no coding". My mother, for example, who is in her mid 60s, would understand "no programming". She wouldn't understanding "no coding". My partner, who isn't half that age, and does use computers all the time, to her "no programming" is also substantially more meaningful than "no coding". In fact, pretty much everyone I know who uses "coding" in their vocabulary can code, at least a little. :)

As for the price -- I think a one-time payment attracts a lot more business than a recurring plan or a "until the next major version" approach where there is a new major version once a year, when your target audience consists of mainly hobbyists. I would almost certainly not have bought a license if it would have been almost subscription-like. I know that it's pretty common for development software, and I even agree that it's fine for company users (C2 has a business license, too), but for an end user and especially a hobbyist the model that Scirra went with is a far more appealing.

Or differently put, something like WebStorm and its annually update fee, or Sublime Text and its "until the next major version" way, those are expenses I can put on my tax declaration, because they are work-related tools for me, and my boss may even pay for them. It's different for C2, which is more or less solely for fun and hobby-stuff for me -- if it wasn't, I would have a business license and those do cost more than $79).

Opinion: Elevator music would be a tad annoying, but situational themes wouldn't be and could contribute substantially to the mood.

Unity is a great cross-platform mobile tool; however,

you need not only coding skills, but lots of money. Engine has a price, each function has a price, each exporter has a price

The standard version of Unity 3D is free, and both Android and iOS standard exporters are free also until April 8.

But I agree that it's really a different beast than C2. C2 allows you to really make a working game on the first day you pick up the software. It's not just a marketing claim, but actually true. It even scales well with the user's knowledge and much can be done with it as far as HTML5 games are concerned.

Unity has a much, much steeper learning curve. It's an awesome piece of software too, but purpose and audience are quite different. It's not better, or worse, just totally different.

Eclipse is so bulky. For Javascript I would use WebStorm or a good editor (I use Sublime Text 2, very smitten with it).

I've noticed that the numbers are close to 70 every time I log in. You can watch the rise and fall on their dashboard at http://browserquest.mozilla.org/status/.

The status page you linked to shows the total at the top, and then the load for each sub server and instance (each green bar is a full instance). <img src="smileys/smiley1.gif" border="0" align="middle"> In the game, you get the same numbers:

<img src="http://i42.tinypic.com/14v4r5k.png" border="0">

Besides, you can change the plan on the fly anyway. I had a different one, needed some other feature and they simply switched me over and sent an invoice with the difference for the remaining time, so I didn't have to get something totally new and only paid the actual difference in price without any setup etc fees.

You can probably find cheaper places, but yeah, I appreciate good support and flexibilty where I can actually get an issue resolved in a day and not a week. :)

Yes, you can. They have a built-in file manager and I think you can even drag and drop files. I just need FTP for some work stuff. :) Most people probably do not need it.

I use Hostgator and I am satisfied enough to have pre-paid for the next two years. :) Reliable servers, a ton of tools, support for everytging I want (including ftp and ssh), and when I sent in tickets I got responses within a few hours. It is all fairly clean, accessible and fast (they also do not put ads on your 404 pages, which is something that irked me when I had a site elsewhere). Plus they take PayPal and do not require you to have a card linked to it, like GoDaddy does.

Note that stuff like ftp and ssh may not be included in the offer you mentioned. I think ftp only came with the Baby Gator plan and up. Might need to check if the offer you look at has everything you want. Haven't looked into that.

They use instancing for the game world. If one instance has ~60'ish players in it, a new instance is opened. If you hover over the population number, it shows you how many people are playing at the time across all instances. (I experienced some ghosting, where characters were either invisible or bled through from another instance.)

As for sounds, I just looked through the files and I didn't see any audio files, so this is probably a future feature. :)

Just sifted a bit through the files, and there are sound files -- so that explains we didn't get any audio. <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

See here, too: scirra.com/forum/browserquest-a-massively-multiplayer-html5_topic50600.html

Do sounds actually work for you guys? On my system, and with Firefox 11, the game's muted. I did finish it, though, and it's very well done. Love all the pop culture references! :)