Is Flash gaming dead?

[peptobismol]

Flash is actually focusing its development toward games with molehill/starling etc... It's not a tool for graphic designers and Joe Shmoe anymore. It's heavy coding dev. You'll have a lot more of flash newbie going on flash forums asking, "I want to make a game. How do I make one?" Where to begin with that one?

It'll be around but only for games. It will die off for everyday web components though, it already has I think.

[drpelz]

I totally agree with you. If it's not really new then I don't need it. And when a truly new technology gets published then I'm ready for the change.

[Mazoonist]

I came across something interesting the other day.... Check this out: http://torrentfreak.com/court-orders...-sites-120316/ Scroll down just a tiny bit. Look at the ad in the right hand column. It's an ad for the iPad2. Right click the ad and you will see it is made with Flash. Is that ironic, or what?

I thought it was a nice looking ad. The irony, of course, is that you wouldn't see it on the iPad2.

[drpelz]

It'll be around but only for games. It will die off for everyday web components though, it already has I think.

That's absolutely true. But I'm interested in making games with Flash only. So I have no problems if it's dying in other development areas like web design, ads and that kind of stuff. I don't care about that. I know that Adobe pushes the Flash technology to the gaming industry massively and to be honest I think it's the best step they ever made with Flash. Especially stage3D, AIR 3.2 and the starling-framework look very very promising. I think for the next years Flash's future is definitely the gaming industry.

@Mazoonist:

I thought it was a nice looking ad. The irony, of course, is that you wouldn't see it on the iPad2.

I think most ads on the web still use Flash (same goes to video).

[tango88]

Some great comments since I last checked in.

To be sure, I would MUCH rather be using Flash than HTML5, which means you also need to mess with javascript and jquery etc. I'd be much happier if the haters and Apple executives would see sense and embrace flash technologies.

On the other hand, I feel that I NEED to be flexible. If a certain percentage of users are on the iPad, i need to think about them. This is now, not a couple years away.

It'll be around but only for games.

I disagree with this, or at the very least, I hope it's wrong. As well as my flash games site in my sig, I built this site for English Learners: http://www.roadtogrammar.com - all in Flash, and Flash provides an EXCELLENT platform for learning activities. But, once again, I get whining from iPad users.

[tango88]

...and by the way, have you guys seen this:

It's a demo of an Adobe product that ports Flash animation to HTML5

http://t.co/EQfLOmAo

[drpelz]

That demo demonstrating the porting of Flash animations to HTML5 is just for the guys out there who still use the old Flash IDE (i.e. Flash authoring software). For game developers who make their games with pure AS3 (i.e. using an appropriate code editor and the Flex framework) this shouldn't be interesting for them...

[tango88]

"is just for the guys out there who still use the old Flash IDE... "

Well... that'd be me...

Actually, I was thinking of switching to Flex. Maybe someone could let me know what the experience would be like for someone who uses the old-timey Flash CS5, and what the benefits would be

[ASWC]

You got to love HTML5 for that. While with Flash you output a compressed unique .swf that you can easily deploy anywhere and that is streaming, you can do the same with HTML5 by creating hundreds or even thousands of bitmap to simulate the animations (real easy to deal with) which you better cache prior to page loading if you want those animation to play seamlessly (no streaming here), caching that will of course make the loading of page slower. No really you got to love that new and awesome technology...

[tango88]

@ASWC - I totally agree.

But you know the funny thing? I went on an HTML forum page and every time someone releases an HTML5 demo of this or that, everyone is like 'See? who needs flash now. Flash is dead, lol' etc etc