Flash gaming: The future

Ending our series on the state of Flash gaming, we find out how 3D and Zynga-style microtransactions may maintain its dominance over the browser.

we discovered how Flash has so far seen off competition to its rule over browser gaming. Its reliable economy has established it as a robust companion to the high-risk high-reward market of iPhone, while its vast installed base sets it apart from webgame alternatives like Unity or HTML5.

But Flash's battles are far from over - HTML5 will one day get up to speed and Unity is looking much more aggressive too, introducing the ability to export to Flash's .swf filetype in order to hijack that technology's market reach. Faced with such threats, Flash's masters at Adobe are finally manoeuvring: introducing Flash Stage 3D and the ability to tap into the power of the GPU. But is it too little too late? And where is the long promised cross-platform support?
"Adobe have done bugger all to help game developers, for years and years," says Rich Davey, Aardman Digital's technical director, and the man behind webgame dev Photonstorm. "Now they've finally realised people make games in Flash and nobody's using it to make websites any more. Current browsers are doing video quite well without it, too. Games are the one area where Adobe don't have competition yet."
"I think they're taking the right steps," agrees Chris Hughes, co-founder of game sponsorship marketplace Flash Game License. "Adobe have a games division now, which they didn't for a long time. They see it as huge business, and something they need to do to keep their market share. 3D is part of that and they've hinted at all kinds of other game specific ideas. The huge one is cross-platform - that's got a way to go. When you port something from Flash to iOS you still get a huge performance hit."

3D dreams

But even the advent of 3D (here's a more in-depth look at 3D gaming in browsers) produces some mixed feelings. Hughes welcomes it, Davey thinks it should have arrived years ago, while others worry that it will threaten to drive production costs beyond what the current sponsorship market can sustain. Reece Millidge of Damp Gnat, which recently released the delightful Wonderputt, finds himself somewhere in the middle, eager to experiment with graphics acceleration and the 3D space, but uncertain about what it will do to the existing webgame economy.

 

Wonderputt is a visually delightful mini golf game

"I've noticed in the chat rooms that the one thing that is troubling Flash devs is the looming black cloud of Flash 3D on the near horizon," he says. "They feel it will threaten indies by opening up the browser platform to bigger companies who will be in a better position to meet the new demands of what the public will expect and favour."
Matthew Annal, managing director of webgame outift Nitrome, sees 3D as an easy way to drive up production costs to little effect: "There are a limited amount of impressions you can achieve even at the top end. And you quite quickly reach the point where you can't afford to spend any longer on a game. Just because it's the best internet game ever, it doesn't mean it will generate so many more impressions that it will pay for it. But 3D isn't a massive threat either," he adds. "People who want to play a free-to-play game are often looking for an experience which is quick to pick up and play - making the game more complex or in-depth isn't necessarily what people are looking for in a browser game."