What’s up with Flash gaming?

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What’s up with Flash gaming?

Posted by James - 11/06/08 at 11:06:16 pm

I’ve been pondering Flash games for a while now, and it occurred to me that I don’t quite see so many as I thought I used too. I don’t know – maybe its because I just move in different circles now I’m in the ‘professional’ world, but it seems like there’s more emphasis on the practical things like applications or tools and everyones’ forgotten about the fun things like games.

So, where have all the Flash games gone – and has anything changed in the last 4 or 5 years?

Well, Newgrounds is the old one I remember – and except for a ‘Web 2.0′ facelift, it seems like the same old content is there – Stickman animations (StickDude Killing Arena 4), various impressive console-game-style conversions and a variety of time sucking Minigames (The Zombie Wars). Ok, you have to give credit to the guys who made this stuff, but it doesn’t seem like things have progressed at all on the ‘wow factor’.

Back when I first started seeing Flash the best stuff was animations and games – often simple graphics and animations, but they trumped anything that businesses and promotional websites had. 5 years on and the commercial world of Flash is on the cutting edge – not quite developing - but certainly making use of the latest and greatest visual effects, things like Papervision3D. The stuff on Newgrounds? That’s like, so 2003.

Does this mean Flash games are going out of fashion? Unlikely - It’s probably just my age (and by that I mean I’m no longer surfing the internet while I’m bored in lectures). But it would seem that the community-driven Flash game development has progressed at a much slower rate than the commerical games – but then maybe that’s just because people have different motivations!

(Commercial) Flash game example;

Or “You’ve read this much so I might as well provide some sort of link to backup my musings…”

This is RoboBrawl. It’s like BBC tv series Robot Wars, but it’s been produced to promote the intel Xeon processors, as the not-to-subtle advertising points out. The slick design is the main attraction for this site – a lot of work has gone into both the game programming and the design, that much is obvious – but without the appealing mid-battle interface I don’t think it would work. The visuals are what carries the site, because the ‘game’ itself isn’t quite so visually powerful once you get into it. Regardless, it’s a good place to while away several minutes and absorb some marketing messages!

And of course, we mustn’t forget the Red Bull Flugtag.

Posted by James Ford

Full profile: http://www.psyked.co.uk/about

About the author: James is a Senior New Media Developer at MMT Digital, and has BA(Hons) in Design for Interactive Media from the University of Gloucestershire. He loves designing and producing all sorts of website and Flash-related things, as well as prattling on about technologies. Day-to-day he works with Flash, Dreamweaver, Director, Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (MOSS) and in his spare time he mucks about in Flex and Wordpress. Follow James on Twitter.

June 11, 2008 | In Flash | 12 Comments

12 Comments »

Well have to agree with you on the slow down of flash games these days, BUT personally I feel we are in a “next-gen” area for flash gaming. With so many new open source api’s (id list them, but there just so many!) supporting 3d, physics, and so on… Really it’s just a matter of time before we really start seeing the second coming of flash games! Yes it’s true there will always be those mini games that are on the many different flash portals, BUT there are a lot of games (you have to do some digging) that are really “next-gen” in a flash sense, flash player 10 id have to say is helping push this new experience.

Comment by Joseph burchett — 12 June 2008 #
Serious developers don’t make flash games (usually). The lion’s share of all submission to Newgrounds are made by teenagers, they’re simply not skilled enough. At the same time there are number of casual games made in flash – check The Scruffs, Burger Island, A Pirates Legend, etc…

Comment by Mike — 12 June 2008 #
2 Joseph burchett:
Flash player 10 is not a solution. 3D is crap, no REAL hardware support. So FP10 will not change much situation in flash game making.

Comment by Mike — 12 June 2008 #
Well you are right with a few things, “made by teenagers, they’re simply not skilled enough.” Well this is true sometimes, but I don’t think I explained myself very clearly when I said the “next-gen” of flash gaming… When I mentioned flash player 10 I didn’t say it was the solution for better games I said, “is helping push this new experience.” Yes, “Serious developers don’t make flash games (usually).”, thats not true… There are tons of business model being created to help fund the creation of quality flash games, and there are people who are serious about making quality flash games. YES, okay a large percent of flash games are pushed towards the casual market… This I will not deny but that does not mean there is not room for quality flash games out there that are pushing the limits of what flash can do by implementing quality 3D engines like papervision, away3D or sandy3D, physics engines like APE, FOAM, Fisix, particle engines like flint, etc. What I meant by “next-gen” of gaming really is that unlike before where we saw nothing but really 2d games, or just generic puzzle games, with all the new open source things popping up it will allow flash developers (novice, or advanced) to bring about a more rich generation of flash gaming.

I know that flash will never reach the level of any thing like C++ I am just saying with all the advancements in the open source community in flash there are tools being made that if put in the right hands will allow for a much more rich experience in the world of flash gaming… and perhaps bringing an end to the same old junk we see on the popular flash portals. It really just takes some one to be innovative and create something new and amazing! Really that’s the only reason why we see the same old crap, not because flash is limited, it can do a lot, people are not just using it to its fullest potential yet.

I can list many examples if you’d like of people already trying to push flash to its limits to make awesome games. Its just you have to really look for them because it’s still a growing area.

Comment by Joseph burchett — 12 June 2008 #
Yes, it’s still growing area. Growing power and features of as3 bring more skilled developers to flash. And I’m the one of those people who trying to push flash further for the moment I can say that flash is great for many kind of 2d games. Clever rendering (you know that fast copyPixel method), faster as3 makes flash even more powerful than Director (but as I mentioned before in 2d gaming). It’s not a problem to implement games like Bejeweled, Zuma, Prof. Fizzwizzle in flash. But it’s not a time for ral 3d gaming. Not yet.

Comment by Mike — 12 June 2008 #
Yup, yup, we are clearly on the same page I am with you all the way with pushing flash, and I am to aware of the limitations of 3d in flash.. but they are getting there! Actually I have been working on a 3d flash game myself with a bunch of other people, yeah we are trying to optimize it so we get something higher then 11fps @.@ but it still chugs… sigh. Director shines in the 3D space but 2d, ease of development, popularity flash wins hands down Which is why I love working in AS3 so much, its such a EASY language to work in and its so popular but I am sure by 2009 we will be seeing some much higher quality stuff then what we have seen now! I mean like this game was built in sandy (my 3d AS3 engine of choice ) http://www.qigames.com/game.php?id=alienslayer and it is fantastic! clearly they are using a lot of 2d sprites, but its a very lovely blend of both 3d and 2d This is the sort of stuff I am hoping to see more of… not first person shooters… (we see enough of those in the console space @.@) but just more so games of this quality. Also have you checked out the demos of this new AS3 3D engine? my god it is amazing! http://alternativaplatform.com/en/alternativa3d/ I dunno how they managed to make things run so smoothly… I mean they were getting up to 60fps… (then again there wasn’t a lot of moving objects on the screen to render, but still) Also with the native 3d support now, that means the open source 3d people can start reworking there engines to use the code that is supplied to them from within flash player 10, meaning that will help speed up things, that makes me a bit gitty But yeah, we are still a ways away from REALLY good 3D in flash, but damn we are getting there, and on the way we are seeing some amazing things, as everyone is getting ready for the “revolution”! lol… http://paperworld3d.com/ But really I am curious to see where that whole C++ thing goes with flash, remember that vid shown at max a while back? http://www.peterelst.com/blog/2007/10/03/adobe-max-chicago-sneak-peeks/ (second vid) and finally… just for the hell of it… cuz this vid rules… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMU0tzLwhbE LOL, ah steve ballmer, what would we do without you *coughs* silverlight sucks *coughs*, erhm, excuse me had something in my throat there <.<

Comment by Joseph burchett — 12 June 2008 #
Those Sandy and Alternativa games are very impressive – I guess the main barrier to a lot of potential Flash game developers is the complexity of the 3D classes – which is something I’m really hoping Flash Player 10 will cure when they unleash the native 3D stuff.

Great points guys!

Comment by James — 12 June 2008 #
Alternativa and Sandy are great as FLASH 3d engines It is more likely impressive experiments in flash.
For me it’s not great to watch few low-poly models without any basic shader support and 70% of CPU usage in task manager.
So… Waiting for better 3d and hardware support from Adobe!

Comment by Mike — 12 June 2008 #
Within the flash gaming scene i personally think that the bar is generally set pretty low (ok there are a minority of great flash games out there). I have a portal site (yeah – haven’t we all:p ) and i get sent some “commercial” games that really should be binned… i mean REALLY BAD – and yet the client has parted with cash in a desperate attempt to get something “viral” out there. Meanwhile the middle-men (you know who you are) continue to sell-in these half-arsed creations to win a quick buck and thus damaging the track records for SUCCESSFUL game-related marketing campaigns.

Ok, maybe that sounds harsh – using gaming as a marketing tool is still relatively new and naivety obviously plays a part here but as Flash creatives we should be pushing towards a quick console quality gaming experience.

By that i don’t mean recreating half-life in flash with a 3D engine (ok im a fine one to talk with Ultrakillz.com – not strictly a “proper” 3d engine but hey its fun to play). Instead, how about tidying up some UI elements, picking a nice font and doing the best we can with what we’ve got – one of the nicest examples is heliattack – proper job! It still baffles me to this day why we arent all aiming for that level of quality and finish.

The only reason i can think of is that the real fun as a developer is creating some clever tech demo and then moving on. If only more creations could be pushed over the finish line.

Comment by barrax — 12 June 2008 #
Yeah I agree with you barrax, but I believe the issue was said pretty well to with what mike said in one of his first comments, “made by teenagers, they’re simply not skilled enough.” Yeah great thing about flash is the entry level is so low, its real easy to pick up, and easy to distrubte… and because of this we see a lot of “shovel-ware” as they say in the console scene.

“a quick console quality gaming experience. “, that is excatly what I am talking about! that is what we need, the tools are there, but yeah seriously now all we see is lots and lots of tech demos… So many tech demos. “Hey look everyone I just spent months on this awesome API… I didn’t create anything really usable out of it… But hey look what I can do o.o *shows off tech demo*… Okay now I am bored on to creating the next API, W00T!”

the thing I love about Sandy3D is that there focus is strictly on ease of use, I tried using the most main-stream flash 3D engine… Papervision3D… And well really it left a bad taste in my mouth. It was confusing, the documentation was a mess, to many different ways to do just one thing (I will never understand why it is so popular). I think that may also be a barrier with all these new api’s out there, they do awesome things, but a lot of people never really follow through with them and because of that they are lacking quality documentation and ease of use. Which in turn makes it hard for people to advance and make killer apps!

Comment by Joseph burchett — 12 June 2008 #
Ultrakillz – I like that game!

As for viral games – I don’t think people are doing enough – or there isn’t any real way for games to go viral. Look at YouTube and all these video services, they’re a media that successfully goes viral because they can be passed around easily and embedded into websites – they even provide the code – but I certainly haven’t seen a way for games to do the same.

All it takes is a little button, some extra code and Boom! you have a game that can get thrown around, shared on MySpace and Facebook. It’s an obvious thing for video services nowadays…

Comment by James — 12 June 2008 #
You make a good point o.o… But I think you are thinking more about distribution then the actual evolution of flash gaming. BUT in a way I believe the two intermix. If we can have a more effective way to distribute games, then more people with quality games can get there game out there. Then again this could back fire and just help make the spread of crap games easier. Flash portals already do this to some extent, with there whole judging process and eliminate based on quality. But I suppose it would be more interesting if Flash portals start to incorporate a feature that pretty much all video portals sites already offer (youtube, myspacetv, etc), making it so you can easily embed the media (your flash game) across the web. Google I believe does that sort, you can create a widget, and face book, you can create face book apps out of your flash games http://www.emanueleferonato.com/2008/05/30/integrate-your-flash-game-on-facebook/ But yeah, you sir have a good idea and perhaps could be the next step in flash portals.

Comment by Joseph burchett — 12 June 2008 #