We absolutely didn’t celebrate its downfall. Flash had issues, but the culture of flash games was awesome.
That said, indie games are way better these days
Anon misses flash
Submitted 11 hours ago by Early_To_Risa@sh.itjust.works to greentext@sh.itjust.works
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/939b1d9c-eb6c-49bf-9ad5-cd5780e1ed28.png
Comments
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 3 hours ago
That said, indie games are way better these days
They all seem to be the same boring stardew valley/dead cells/anyotherauccessfullindiegame clones with pretty pixelart and too much time e commitment needed
Samskara@sh.itjust.works 34 minutes ago
There are lots of other games as well. Let me recommend a couple:
- What remains of Edith Finch
- A short hike
- Outer Wilds
- Disco Elysium
- Feather
- Gris
- Journey of the broken circle
- Sayonara Wild Hearts
- Untitled Goose Game
- a dark room
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 39 minutes ago
There was a lot of lazy copies with flash games too
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Yeah there’s a lot of copycats, though even within that there’s some great stuff. My wife has been loving fields of mistria. But also I’m currently playing slay the spire 2 and loving it. You’ve got games like cult of the lamb, Rogue Legacy (1&2), every supergiant game, Cassette Beasts, and less well known ones like Song of the Deep. Flash games were their own thing and it was awesome, but with limited time for games these days I’d rather be playing modern indie games. But I understand why some people would feel the opposite
TheSeveralJourneysOfReemus@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
the time commitement bit is real.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2 hours ago
:: looks around nervously as someone who loves those specific games::
antsu@discuss.tchncs.de 5 hours ago
However, consider: if Flash was still popular, by this point Adobe would have enshittified it to hell and back to milk its customers.
bruhbeans@lemmy.ml 11 hours ago
To be fair, flash was garbage proprietary tech fully under control of fucking Adobe. All the shit people hate about JavaScript now, the spying, the adtech, was done in flash first.
Gullible@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
Iirc, wasn’t flash deprecated because of unpatchable bugs that presented a gaping holein your browser security?
ByteJunk@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Risky click of the day…
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 9 hours ago
maybe that too, but mainly it was the move from desktops to smartphones and tablets, which Flash was (at minimum) not very suited for if it was supported at all
This may be the only good thing caused by the existence of iOS: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash
kautau@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Ironically I believe flash mostly died for that as a founding moment on why apple would not support it on iPhones. Adobe only finally killed it after safari decided it wouldn’t support it
drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
All the shit people hate about JavaScript now, the spying, the adtech, was done in flash first.
And the shitty slow overly complicated ‘web app’ pages that could’ve presented the same content in a hundred lines of HTML. That was done in Flash before it was done in JavaScript.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 1 hour ago
To be fair, flash filled a gaping hole in html and css standards for a hot minute. Heck for the longest time flash was the best way to serve a video player because of those limitations. It also was instrumental in enabling animated videos on the Internet in a time when video on the web was too bandwidth intensive to be viable. We’re talking the days of Internet connections measured in individual megabit per second being “fast” and dialup not being uncommon
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Well, it used to be a brilliant innovation by Macromedia.
JDPoZ@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Then like all things bought by Adobe… it became complete shit.
DemBoSain@midwest.social 10 hours ago
Point: early_to_risa.
58008@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
You can still do this. There’re loads of free and basic (i.e. easy-to-learn) game engines and you can make games of much better quality with the same effort. itch.io is full of free games made by amateurs.
When people celebrate the downfall of Flash, it’s not because of the games. It’s because the entire internet was replete with unnecessary Flash-heavy bullshit that required constantly updating your browser’s Flash plugins (and all browsers had their own version you had to install and update), and how it was completely unsuited to any sort of UI/UX (e.g. you couldn’t even copy and paste text in Flash pages most of the time). And all that is to say nothing of the gaping goatse of a security hole that it was.
It was cancer. Just because the cancer got you down to your goal weight, it doesn’t mean you should lament the success of your chemotherapy.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Metaphor game on point.
Brunbrun6766@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Who the fuck celebrated? I remembered many pissed off millennials and Gen x
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
The people mistakenly claiming html5 was going to be the next Flash, I guess
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
It… Is? Check out itch.io and there’s still.shitloads of browser games around.
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 4 hours ago
People who have no clue what they’re talking about be like:
I mean, seriously… Celebrating FLASH of all things? And complaining that there are no more free amateur games? MF, never heard of Unity? Godot? O3DE? Defold? GDevelop? OGRE? renpy? pygame? stride?
The worst of these still being infinitely better than Flash. And then you can publish your work at Itch.io.
Visstix@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I think they are just celebrating the era. The Internet was completely different then. A lot of those flash games later turned into microtransation shit as well on new engines.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 1 hour ago
Only the ones that had enough staying power to be turned into microtransaction shit on new engines. Remember how many horrendously grotesque and edgy games there were for no point other than to be horrendously grotesque and edgy? Sure we have some of those now but scrolling Steam or Itch it isn’t a constant stream of edgelord suicide simulators or whatnot
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 3 hours ago
Yeah, it’s just unsubstantiated “looking back through rose tinted glasses” kind of thing.
Mwa@thelemmy.club 3 hours ago
Web Assembly will always be better then Flash(the Engines you mentioned turns the code into Web Assembly)
tetris11@feddit.uk 4 hours ago
itch is full of low quality generic slop made by restrictive game engines. A few good games. A few.
Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de 3 hours ago
So exactly the same as flash games?
Mwa@thelemmy.club 3 hours ago
so like Gamemaker and Unity??
rozodru@piefed.world 3 hours ago
yeah it was fine to play games on or see neat websites but it was absolute garbage to build and maintain with.
fresh out of college one of my first jobs was a web master for an ad agency whose site was purely built in flash/actionscript. It was the absolute worst to update. I hated it. I was one of those that celebrated flash and actionscripts downfall.
jcorvera@quokk.au 2 hours ago
If Anon misses flash, Anon should look into Flashpoint and Ruffle.
Muffi@programming.dev 9 hours ago
The amateur game dev community is thriving like never before. Itch.io has become Newgrounds on steroids, full of incredibly creative, fun and free games.
People like to complain about what has been lost on the modern internet, without spending any time actually looking and trying out the new niches.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 hours ago
How are you finding decent free games on itch? Every time I go it’s a flood of visual novels, shit “horror” games, or whatever the latest streamer bait is but poorly copied 1000 times. And the filtering tools are just limited enough that I can’t seem to get a good “feed” going.
Newgrounds was far from a neverending fointain of pure quality, but I feel like finding quality stuff on it is an order of magnitude harder than it used to be in the days of flash. Used to be curated lists and sites with new quality stuff like every week.
nobody158@r.nf 1 hour ago
Add to the end of the url ?exclude=tg.visual-novels
That should get rid of the ones that are properly labeled. Sadly only works with one tag but definitely helps.
Muffi@programming.dev 1 hour ago
I engage in the community - just like the good old newgrounds days. There was also tons of unplayable, eyecatchy stuff back then, we just dont remember it as much.
The most effektive way is to participate in game jams, get to know people and find out who makes the quality stuff. Pretty much exactly like finding good new podcasts or youtubers. It takes some effort but it is totally worth it.
Mwa@thelemmy.club 5 hours ago
I heard somewhere that Flash itself is garbage (not the games in it)
tetris11@feddit.uk 4 hours ago
It had massive security holes, but its vector handling is sublime
Mwa@thelemmy.club 4 hours ago
yeah i agree
RamenJunkie@midwest.social 1 hour ago
There are a shitload of free in browser and not games on itch. Anon OP is just a fucking lemming who thinks they have to pay $80 for the latest COD.
Fuck even some.AAA shit like Overwatch and Fortnite are free.
makeitwonderful@lemmy.today 8 hours ago
Flashpoint Archive is attempting to archive all the flash games and animations.
Pat_Riot@lemmy.today 4 hours ago
Gen X misses Flash, too. My Geocities page featured a beat maker with samples you could trigger to make cool drum and bass with.
banazir@lemmy.ml 2 hours ago
Flash was trash that made the web almost unusable for a time. I was glad it died. Shit never properly worked anyway.
EfreetSK@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
It wasn’t about the technology. If HTML 5 was available at the time, people would code in that
kepix@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
nostalgia has made these crap games great. they never were good in the first place. you had a good laugh as a 12 year old at tech class, but thats it.
drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
Plenty of mobile games are clones of free Flash games with added monetization.
For example Angry Birds is just Crush the Castle.
Noe, I’m not going to argue that these mobile games are good, but they’re shitty because of their monetization schemes. As free flash games that were short enough to not overstay their welcome they were fine.
Add to that there being a few flash games that were genuine attempts at art. Which I think are valuable if for no other reason than to see the history of indie games.
Scrollone@feddit.it 7 hours ago
QWOP was hilarious though.
sidebro@lemmy.zip 6 hours ago
For five minutes, maybe.
Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de 3 hours ago
There were a couple of gems though.
I remember going to the library to play specific games over and over. We tried fresh ones every day, but kept going back to games like those motorbike racing sidescrollers.
Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 hours ago
AdventureQuest though…
I must’ve sunk hundreds of hours at the library playing that
Also honorable mention to danball powder game
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 1 hour ago
AdventureQuest is somehow still in development
Static_Rocket@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
Ah, but raft wars
Depress_Mode@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Celebrated? That’s not how I remember it at all. From what I recall, everyone pretty much immediately understood what was about to be lost and mourned it when it was gone. There was a huge effort to archive all the flash content people could find, so many people obviously felt flash content was worth preserving. I’ve got a flash emulator that natively has pretty much every flash game and animation I remember from when I was a kid. I might have to boot it up for a bit tonight for old time’s sake.
lung@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
QuiteQuickQum@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Who celebrated?
laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 hours ago
I did, it was a horrible medium littered with security issues and most of them were hot garbage in the first place.
The best fun was being asked to modify the menu on a website only to find the “webmaster” who built the site used Flash for that, and having to figure out how to reverse engineer it.
It was way past time for it to die when it was finally forced off the Internet… One of the few things I thank Apple for doing
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 9 hours ago
Everyone who liked free and open source software and open standards and such things, which Flash was very much the antithesis of.
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 10 hours ago
Adobe went from “You should implement your entire website in flash, see how modern and unique you can make it!” to “We’re terminating flash in a year”
saltesc@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
To be fair, Macromedia had peak Flash and Dreamweaver for “Website dreams can come true!” era. When Adobe acquired them, they started ruining it and leveraging legacy. Yes, the tech improved as would be expected over time, but the passion was gone. Adobe killed Flash but had already taken its soul years earlier.
People don’t realise many of their favourite Flash games were from 2005 or earlier—the larger parts of the golden era. They were Macromedia games then.
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 hours ago
People don’t even talk about Shockwave any more. Early 3D games in the fucking browser! It was amazing.
Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 8 hours ago
I remember being told at school not to learn HTML because flash is what websites are going to be made in now.
ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
I honestly miss those flash games. Like I’d spend hours upon hours scrolling through websites like bored.com playing all kinds of games. I could play any game in any genre and have a great time.
I miss those times. Maybe I miss them because they remind me of my youth but they were amazing either way.
Nangijala@feddit.dk 7 hours ago
The last line I don’t remember being true. Pretty much everybody were pissed that flash was canceled. I sure as shit was. Still go to ferryhalim.com/orisinal/ to play his old flash games. He managed to make them work again after flash was discontinued. I was so happy because I love his games and their atmosphere.
Also loved the Bitey animations with the little pan who runs around being a total asshole to animals in this weird fantasy world.
I dunno why this anon thinks that millennials were celebrating the downfall of flash. We really didn’t. We just didn’t have any power to save it.
Mac@mander.xyz 7 hours ago
Fancy Pants, Falling Sand, Stick Fight, Kill Your Boss, Moto Trials games etc etc
Gooooood timesSethTaylor@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Newgrounds still works. They’ve adapted
jcorvera@quokk.au 2 hours ago
Along with Homestar Runner. I think Newgrounds and H*R were the two big flash sites to pivot to using Ruffle.
JOMusic@lemmy.ml 6 hours ago
Making things is Godot actually feels a lot like making Flash games used to
Little_mouse@lemmy.ca 9 hours ago
There are plenty of other places to play games online still, Like Pico-8
Object@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
Does anyone know the name of the game that features that particular ball under “Anonymous” in the image? I remember that ball very well, but I can’t find the game.
Meron35@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
It never died though? The Devs just pivoted to different platforms. Itch, Newgrounds, and even the major app stores have endless content from indie devs.
Flash games were just never mainstream enough. And let’s not forget that the most popular flash games were those shitty FB games, like FarmVille and Candy Crush, or that the shitty mobile games all started off as clones/ports of already popular flash games, like Angry Birds/Crush the Castle.