Why I think Flash sucks.

First off, I just want to say I think Flash is awesome. It’s a pretty solid tool for creating games and applications with great documentation and a nice interface with an even brighter future ahead of it. The problem isn’t Flash itself. As a tool it has its quirks, sure, but everything does. The real problem is the flash games market. More specifically, its audience and the kind of games that audience expects.

Why we Use Flash

All of us had some degree of experience using it, but that wasn’t really the deciding factor. Starting out, we looked to the places of least resistance/lowest barriers to entry on a few different points. Flash seemed to be the answer for us, and it has been a good route. Had we gone with something like Torque 2D [what I was using at the time] or Ogre we probably would have had a much harder time getting our games out there in terms of exposure.

1. Flash has a 95% penetration rate on the internet. Clearly, it won’t be hard getting people to play our game(s) if most people with the internet can immediately play it. This cuts out interest-to-play conversion rates almost completely.
2. Get something running quickly. With Flash it’s relatively simple to get something up on the screen and playable within a matter of hours.
3. A lot of people will play a free-to-play game. The market does allow for free games to make money through a number of ways.
4. Potential. We felt the flash game market has been under served for far too long with throw-away shovelware type games and would be interested in more in-depth games.

All of the above is true, but there are some key points missing from this equation. Things that might deter a developer from developing in Flash at all. But first, the real reason this whole Flash + Me marriage isn’t going to work out in the long term is basically due to the kind of games I want to make.

The Kind of Games I Want to Make

I want to make a lot of different games. Some large in scope, others, just simple toys. Variety is the spice of life and it’s no different than with my goals for game design. However, there is one thing that I’d like to uphold no matter the size or theme of any game I create. I want to make games for my peers. Even if an art-style appears “kiddy” or whatnot, it’s still targeted towards my peers mainly because I make games that I want to play. I don’t want to “target” anyone or anything other than what feels natural. Staying true to that vision is the whole reason I got into game development in the first place and I’m not about to compromise.

The Kind of Games the Flash Market Wants

1. Simple. Sure there are outliers, and you could say something like DTD or Sonny is quite complex, but I would actually contest that point. The Flash world wants simple games that are easy to pick up, winnable and contained.
2. Small. I’ve had a hand in making about 7 flash games so far. Most of those haven’t gotten sponsorships due to their length, complexity, ease-of-use or leprechauns. Regardless, the games that have been [by far] the most successful have been the smallest ones.
3. Audience of 11-18 year olds or 30-something women. Most young adults [my peers] and above have a bit more money to spend on their games and computer hardware. I still play flash games though, and I’m sure plenty of working folk do as well, but the vast majority of these flash portals target this audience.
4. The Flash game pretense. Flash has a history. It’s been around a long time and that is a large part of why it’s so strong penetration-wise. However, that history follows it around giving the general public the idea that a Flash game is a Flash game, and not just a Game game.
5. Free. The price paid for a free game is a strange one that has nothing to do with money. In fact, the players have less of a connection with the game since they have no real investment other than the time they spend playing it [2 minutes].
6. Not too competitive. Clearly this is a nod to Dinowaurs, a heavily competitive 1on1 multiplayer game done in Flash. Especially with zero-sum games, people aren’t used to losing
7. Turn-based multiplayer. Until Flash fully implements UDP, real-time multiplayer is just too messy to actually make work properly.

I think that’s enough bullet points for this post. So I’ll summarize each grief of mine into a sentence based paragraph.

Why This Sucks

First of all, if I don’t want to make a simple game Flash isn’t going to be the best way to monetize it. Dinowaurs taught us a big lesson in that it’s incredibly important to understand what market/platform is best for your game. Dinowaurs is best played on a PC, but is the Flash audience right for something like that? Should we attempt real-time MP with TCP? Don’t we want a more cohesive, positive community that will assist in growing the game? These are huge factors that have nothing to do with actually making the game [which is really all we cared about during the development process] but can mean the difference between a loving reception or a cold shoulder.*

Dinowaurs aside [there are other criticisms that factor into that whole equation] 99% of flash games are free. There are a few awesome folks doing non-free stuff with Flash though, and they are doing pretty well. But really, what I was getting at with the whole free-to-play angle is that it’s a bit of a death-sentence for the developer, their game and ultimately the community surrounding it. Not because you’re giving your game away for free [although it does hurt] but because you’re not editing the game’s audience. As soon as you put up a barrier like $5 in front of a potential player, it weeds everyone who doesn’t care enough to pay for a game. Even so, they might pirate it, but they still care enough to go through the trouble of doing that. It’s not just instantly there at their computer flashing a “play” button before the player can even consider if they are interested or not. That’s actually a problem! It’s not logical, but it’s how it is.

All-in-all I still think Flash has a bright future, and I think sooner-than-later the platform will mature and figure itself out a bit more. We’re still going to make Flash games, and try and test the boundaries, serving this new generation our versions of NES Difficulty. I think that when I get old, I’ll tell my grand kids how hard Kid Icarus was…

In my day, you couldn’t even go back down to the bottom of the level, and if you did, you died!

All the while they’re getting fat off of Peggle IX: Return to Castle Pegglestein. Kids…

*Actually, it did have something to do with the development process of Dinowaurs. Had we done a downloadable game and propagated a dedicated community that gave real and loving input into the game it’s possible the game would have a very different set of features. Upon release, the community would have grown on the strong foundation and the game might be much more well supported, with regular tweaks to the config based on community feedback, perhaps a level editor with user generated levels and so on and so forth.