Characteristics
Browser games are often free-to-play and do not require any client software to be installed apart from a web browser. Multiplayer browser games have an additional focus on social interaction, often on a massive scale. Due to the accessibility of browser games, they are often played in more frequent, shorter sessions compared to traditional computer games.
Since browser games run isolated from hardware in a web browser, they can run on many different operating systems without having to be ported to each platform.
Web standards
Standard web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can be used to make browser games, but these have had limited success because of issues with browser compatibility and quality. These technologies, collectively termed dynamic HTML, allow for games that can be run in all standards-compliant browsers. In addition, dedicated graphics technologies such as SVG and canvas allow for the fast rendering of vector and raster graphics respectively. In addition, WebGL allows for hardware-accelerated 3D support in the browser.
Caution!
Browser games can be a distraction in work environments, causing lost productivity. Critics cite examples such as the occurrence of May 2010, when Google replaced their normal logo with a playable rendition of Pac-Man. A small scale study of 11,000 users concluded that Google's playable logo caused users to spend an extra 36 seconds on Google's homepage, which could be extrapolated to 4.82 million hours over Google's 504 million unique users. Assuming all of this time was lost during time that would have otherwise been spent productively, the game could be considered to have incurred a time cost of $120 million USD in man-hours.
