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# Creating games to make the web fun again

Burned out by ad-driven software development? Discover how Nolan Royalty reignites pure engineering joy by intentionally abusing constraints to ship bizarre, ephemeral web games.

- **Speakers:** Nolan Royalty
- **Event:** Coffee With Developers
- **Published:** November 13, 2024
- **Duration:** 41:03
- **URL:** https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1237-creating-games-to-make-the-web-fun-again

## Summary

Nolan Royalty, creator of E-I-E-I-O games, is on a mission to revive the unpolished joy of the early internet by building bizarre and unexpected web games. Transitioning from a career in finance to independent development, he rediscovered his love for programming by embracing projects devoid of ads and monetization pressures. His philosophy centers on the idea that the internet needs more silly little websites, focusing on pure creativity and active user enjoyment over traditional commercial success.

The viral sensation One Million Checkboxes perfectly encapsulates this ethos. Built as an ephemeral multiplayer experience, the application relied on a database storing user states as a single raw binary blob. This technical choice inadvertently fostered an emergent community: users began writing command-line bots to flip bits, battle over territory, and encode repeating URLs directly into the raw binary data to coordinate via Discord. Rather than punishing this behavior, Royalty celebrated it as a brilliant display of technical deviousness reminiscent of early internet exploration.

Royalty's broader methodology involves purposefully abusing existing software constraints. His projects range from porting Flappy Bird into the MacOS Finder by manipulating the date last opened attribute, to embedding Wordle inside the Firefox auto-complete bar. Pushing platforms to do things they were never designed for introduces unconventional challenges, such as coaxing Finder into rendering more than two frames per second. Because these edge-case problems are entirely out of distribution for large language models, they force developers to genuinely explore, fail, and learn underlying technologies from scratch without relying on AI generation.

Handling viral scale presents real-world financial and engineering hurdles. By self-hosting on infrastructure with predictable bandwidth pricing and iterating on active rate-limiting logic, Royalty kept overhead minimal during traffic spikes. More importantly, he avoids the pressure of perpetual upkeep by embracing ephemerality, intentionally shutting down experiments once their novelty peaks. For software engineers looking to recapture the fun of their craft, his advice is straightforward: prioritize shipping numerous small projects. Doing so quickly clears out bad ideas, helps uncover personal taste, and restores the rewarding, messy spirit of pure engineering.

**Keywords:** browser-based game development, ephemeral web applications, viral website traffic management, binary blob data storage, command line bot development, macos finder rendering manipulation, out-of-distribution programming problems, indie game development experiments, tech career transitions, self-hosted infrastructure scaling, creative api abuse, web application rate limiting, independent software monetization, html5 platform constraints, creative software engineering

## Chapters

1. **Generating joy through experimental browser games** (00:01) — Creating quirky online experiences rekindles the nostalgic spirit of early internet gaming communities.
1. **Navigating career transitions to build unconventional software** (02:29) — Leaving a structured finance job opens space to discover personal fulfillment through exploratory coding.
1. **Managing unexpected viral success as an independent creator** (06:18) — Studying the trajectories of viral hits reveals the hidden emotional and technical burdens on independent developers.
1. **Designing systems to prevent abuse in multiplayer environments** (07:46) — Storing states as simple binary blobs and utilizing responsive viewports create friction against coordinated vandalism.
1. **Uncovering hidden coordinate manipulation communities in binary data** (09:21) — Dumping raw binary application data exposes the lengths a dedicated audience will go to communicate with a developer.
1. **Automating browser events and exploiting rate limiting logic** (11:30) — Creating developer-friendly APIs leads to users designing command line tools that exploit rate limiting systems and automate interactions.
1. **Encouraging hacker mentalities in a consumer tech landscape** (14:23) — Replacing passive app consumption with engaging constraints empowers a shift from pure consumerism back to active experimentation.
1. **Building games by exploiting unintended operating system features** (16:25) — Exploring unintended features of native operating systems unlocks unique technical constraints that breed creative game mechanics.
1. **Seeking community support for undocumented technical challenges** (20:06) — Tackling deeply obscure technological edge cases forces developers to rely on specialized programming communities for guidance.
1. **Retaining unstructured learning and experimentation in software development** (22:24) — Embracing messy side projects fosters independent problem-solving skills that artificial intelligence assistants often fail to replicate.
1. **Choosing creative fulfillment over traditional software monetization models** (24:16) — Evaluating monetization opportunities against personal well-being ensures that passion projects remain isolated from corporate obligations.
1. **Managing server costs and application clones after viral growth** (28:27) — Controlling cloud bandwidth via self-hosting and accepting project ephemerality prevents unsustainable server bills and audience burnout.
1. **Evaluating microtransactions and subscription models for independent projects** (33:56) — Weighing one-off donations against continuous subscription platforms highlights the risk of losing creative autonomy to audience expectations.
1. **Improving engineering intuition through rapid project shipping** (38:14) — Shipping high volumes of small applications accelerates technical learning and helps developers identify their unique engineering taste.

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