Ever since I made Attack of the Meeplings and Caverns of Underkeep – I’ve been wondering if it would make€ sense to invest my time in learning Flash to develop browser-based games.
Java applets have almost completely disappeared where as Flash has become so synonymous with in-browser games that a few people who have tagged my games on StumbleUpon as a ‘Cool Flash Game’
At first I chose java because – Well, I already knew it and I wasn’t that concerned with making money by putting my games on the various Flash aggregate portals, I just wanted to draw some traffic to my own site with some fun free games.
The unfortunate thing is that it is very, very hard to draw traffic to your site, just by having a couple of free games to play.
And for a while I didn’t actually mind that I didn’t make much money through google adsense, because I made some pretty cool games that I was proud of and I thought where quite fun.
But now I’m thinking about a couple of small game ideas that I wouldn’t mind persuing and I think the best platform for delivering small freeware games is in the browser on the web. Leave the downloadable delivery mechanism for more ambitious titles.
So here I am wondering if I should learn Flash?
A couple of years ago I didn’t like Flash one bit – But that was when I had a p4 with 256mb of ram and a geforce2. On a modern PC it actually has good performance and over the last year or two there have been a number of flash games that have actually impressed me.
Also I have heard that Actionscript 3.0 is a much improved programming language with all the OO features you can shake a stick at. And many of the Flash tools are now more focused at developers, rather than only at our right-brained brethren.
So, maybe I should learn Flash? Stay tuned for updates.
#1 by Krice on January 10, 2009 - 8:14 am
Flash is for girls and Flash games are gay.
#2 by Erik Hogan on January 10, 2009 - 2:14 pm
Yeah, I think flash is definitely worth pursuing if you’re interested in Browser based games.
#3 by Stephen Knightly on January 11, 2009 - 10:47 pm
I agree Flash is work checking out. The Flash game portals and ad networks have a solid set of tools too to help you monetise and spread the word. If it’s simple, quick to play, even gimmicky then Flash suits.
#4 by Gab on January 16, 2009 - 11:37 pm
Applets are coming back in force with PulpCore – check it out. And the new JRE update 10 (now 11) makes for a much better end-user experience. I don’t think it’s a good time to move away from Java!
#5 by admin on January 17, 2009 - 5:20 pm
That PulpCore engine is pretty neat. I remember playing the game by the creator about a year ago. Nice work.
Would be cool if it was more portal-alizable though, with ad network support etc..
Might keep an eye on it.