Editorial: Flash, Games and Consoles
Consoles are stealing the best Flash games! Cool!
What do I (Christoph) mean by “game”?
Those of you with $10,000 PC rigs will laugh, but consoles have been my primary gaming systems for a decade — PS1/2/3/P, GBA/Cube/DS/Wii. I recognize that I’m not representative of all gamers but it’s my primary hobby in both time and money terms, so I think I must represent some cross-section of this market. Or not, who cares? ;)
That predilection hasn’t kept me from pouring hours into some amazing Flash games including, of course, the finalists from every Flashforward Film Festival, but it’s usually been a different (and lesser) caliber of experience to me. Chief among my complaints:
- Controls: mouse & keyboard are just awkward (for me) compared to a controller for most types of game.
- Performance: a mid-range Mac has historically not been the best-performing platform for Flash.
- The Browser, etc.: any kind of dramatic mouse movement takes the pointer “out of play” and the whole thing is less immersive when the game is nested inside a div, inside a page, inside a window, inside an application, inside an operating system.
Then something interesting happened: some of the best Flash games began appearing on consoles!
The first one I enocuntered was Alien Hominid — a well-known Flash game that I repsected became a PS2 title that I adored, and is now on several platforms including the 360.
More recently, flOw, a Flash experiment/MFA Thesis (blogged here), became a PS3 experience I played through from start to finish without pause. (And was almost a Wii release instead!)
Last winter’s Flash phenom Line Rider is scheduled to be released on the Wii and DS this spring.
In the past few days, we learned that N+, an evolution of the classic Flash-Ninja game N (also blogged), will appear on the PSP and Xbox 360
We also found out that Wakfu, the new game from the creators of Dofus, will have its own DS complement.
Overall this has been an exciting trend, seeing Flash games ported over to “real” game platforms. And it proves that independent game developers can, by first creating their vision in Flash, get the attention of the Big Boys who might never have taken their concepts seriously otherwise.
For the latest generation of consoles, it’s not always necessary to port your Flash game — for systems like the Wii, PSP and PS3, which have their own web browsers and Flash plugins, it’s possible to create your game in Flash but optimize it for play on consoles. (Examples: Wii, PSP; still looking for a good PS3 portal.)
Flash games are increasingly able to escape their shortcomings on the desktop as well — since the Wiimote and Sixaxis can both be used on desktop systems, it must be possible to use them for Flash games as well (but I’m still loking for good examples of this). AS3 has enabled huge performance gains on all systems (even Macs). And one promise of Apollo is Flash games without the browser, and with more capabilities than SAFlashPlayer or a self-running Flash executable can manage.
And don’t forget Flash Lite games!
All of this leads me to the following conclusions:
If you want to make games, you should seriously consider Flash as a platform — at minimum it’s a great environment for prototyping and developing your ideas; plus it allows you to deploy your game to a vast collection of systems and consoles and, with Apollo, gives you the promise of creating an immersive experience on the desktop as well.
If you’re a gamer, you should pay attention to Flash, even if you look askance at “casual” games — it’s one of the ways that independent developers with limited budgets are able to put unique, groundbreaking work out there for you to experience, and the best Flash games arguably compare favorably with what consoles can offer.
And if you’ve read this far, you probably either have a dozen more examples to support what I’m saying, or two dozen to refute it; either way, please share your thoughts!
PS: I almost forgot! Game industry veteran John Say will be presenting his insights into Flash game development and the game market generally in his session, Video Game Opportunities with Flash, at Flashforward2007 Boston. That will be one of my must-attend sessions, and we’re working on some other game-related topics as well. Stay tuned!
