In like, 2005-2010ish I remember there being these awesome online games through sites like Mini Clip. All disappeared from the internet.
I understood it had something to do with Java? Or… some plug in? I don’t really understand what either of those mean.
What happened to online games?
Adobe killed Flash. All of those games were Flash. It takes a lot more work to code them as pure JavaScript, and I guess nobody felt like doing it.
Except neopets
Like others said, most web games made in 2000s up to mid 2010s were flash based. When adobe killed flash web game makers either had to re-write the game completely in html5+javascript or leave them to die. Flashpoint is an extremely comprehensive archive of almost every known flash game + an emulator to play them.
Most game jam games on Itch.io run in a browser. You can filter for web games
I think you might be talking about Flash games. Here’s an article that summarizes Flash and what happened to it:
They are still around, and much more advanced than the old flash games.
The market reason is mobile games sucked up all the developers that would make flash games.
Kids aren’t sitting at desktops all day anymore, so you make your game for ipad instead
And fill the game with IAPs.
Exactly. The money is crazy for mobile games if it pops off. Where as flash games are really hard to monetize.
Web games are basically only hobby projects these days.
what i miss is kongregate. i got into it later than i should have and now it is pretty much completely dead. they dont even have chat rooms anymore
Here is a project that archived most of those games: https://flashpointarchive.org/downloads/
It’s great, you can save all your old favorites locally and have a single UI to run them
I’m going to go against the grain a little here and say you may have just grown out of it. A lot of kids have access to Chromebooks through their schools (at least in the States) and you better believe they know exactly where all the online games are.
Is facebook not full of them? When I used facebook in the early days of facebook games, there were lot’s of flash games that later transitioned to HTML5. Games like Farmtown got copied and monetised (e.g. Farmville).
I think the company was Zynga that copied new indie facebook games (I seem to recall drama) and monetised them.
Does that ecosystem still exist?
Yes, but Social Media games have always had MUCH lower quality than online/standalone games.
I don’t know what flash games you were playing but I can’t remember any that I’d describe as quality. The ones I were playing were mostly user uploaded ones made with pirated versions of flash dev tools (I was known to make my own for a while too - this may have ifluenced what I was exposed to).
The most polished games I can think of outside of facebook pre-HTML5 were those ones where you drag the clothes off the woman and it’s a photo of her naked underneath. I seem to recall settings for changing breasts too.
What quality flash games are you thinking of?
Umm, Kongregate and Armor games used to produce famous games. I liked platformer games like Amberial or FancyPants Adventure, also Bloons TowerDefense or I Love/Hate Traffic. Rebuild was one of great ones (strategy survival after zombie apocalypse), etc. There were talented guys out there.
