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http://www.addictinggames.com/

Reproduce this. Easily. Stuff like this is the competition. The site will post many new games a week. This is largely due to something akin to the networking effect with the number of developers on hand.

I saw ben joffe's 2-d shooter. Pretty slick. So is doom in flash:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/mike_id/doom-1

The frame rate is a bit better in flash on my crappy laptop.

HTML 5 is getting there, but it is not there yet.

And it's made in flash.

You Only Live Once

I'll just play this instead.

I'd also recommend Moneyseize. Conceptually, very simple. However, the levels become insanely difficult. Similar to Star Guard you have unlimited lives, and since each level is only a single screen dying never sets you back significantly. Of course, it might sometimes take a few hundred tries to get past that single screen.

I think the indie game Braid was the first game to make this approach of time in games great.

Not true, sir. Not true.
Chronotron

In Chronotron, you create a time paradox and have to restart the level.

It's a game mechanic that's hard to describe in words, and wrapping your head around it inside the game isn't much easier when it's first described with an example or two.

Well, here's a handy tutorial then.

I guess you never played Portal: The Flash Version?

It is a 2d puzzle game and is still quite interesting. So, maybe your argument is actually more of an opinion? The last levels are obviously more interesting...

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Dragy/portal-the-flash-version

According to that study, IRC is the perfect game. Which obviously is wrong, because it is not a game at all. (Not even multiplayer notepad.)
Those "games" miss some essential elements of what's the definition of a game.
There is neither something to play with (except maybe other humans), nor are there defined goals. And there's especially no basic fun creating mechanism in it.

Also, graphics and plot are way too emphasized in TFS.
In reality, graphics are part of what is called "aesthetics". Something that also includes sound, UI design, and the whole feeling of the world you are in.
It is one of four main elements of a game. Those are story, aesthetics, mechanics and technology.
The point is, that they all work as a team, and have to support each other, for it to be a good game.

You can make a exciting game with mechanics only. (See filler for an example.)
But why leave out of the emergence-fostering aesthetics, the gripping story and the use of the latest technology, to make the game really great?

All in all, the study did not study which games are the most fun, but what actions all-in-all are most interesting to us. And it's obvious that human socialization is king here. It's also obvious that when money is scarce, that people prefer those rare games that are not way overpriced. :)

Yes and no. It depends on how independent the different parts of the brain are.

You can think about a project, planning in your head, while indoor cycling, etc.
And you could see the neurons of the digestive system as a completely parallel part of your brain (it has an many neurons as the brain after all).
I bet if you'd do it right, you could do something creative and something logical in parallel too.

But of course you can't do two calculations at once. And you eyes also can only focus on one point.
Your hands can partially do two things at the same time. (Like in this game: http://www.kongregate.com/games/IcyLime/multitask ) But you'll notice the problems.

As you might know, many people just want to play small games in-between things, not invest too much time, etc. And for those people, Flash games are perfect.
According to the German IT/telco industry association "Bitkom", 73% of all online-players from 14 years upwards prefer games in the browser.

And while a call my self a pro gamer, I love Kongregate. Those games have no ultra-realistic graphics, no real stories, etc. So they have to concentrate on good gameplay / mechanics, and then give it nice aesthetics. They can also explore new ideas rather quickly, without a 3-5 year development cycle.

But as usual, xkcd has said it better already: http://xkcd.com/484/
It's really true.
And this is, where a big part of the future of (casual) gaming lies. At least in my eyes.

P.S.: I hope I make sense. I just woke up and my brain has only just started booting. Which makes my sentences somewhat strangely structured. Especially these foreign language capabilities.

If that is the case, I would HIGHLY recommend you get him started on Kongregate Labs' Shootorial. It is essentially a tutorial on how to make a side scrolling shooter in Flash from the ground up. It starts out basic but introduces concepts like logic and hit boundaries and other things that actually require code. Hope he enjoys it!

Check Upgrade Complete. http://www.kongregate.com/games/ArmorGames/upgrade-complete The goal is not the game, the goal is to upgrade everything including the graphic engine. I confirmed for me that improving the graphics and music might help a LITTLE bit, but if you find a game boring, the graphics wont help at all. Actually... if you find it fun, you already don't mind abou the graphics I guess.

I'm not claiming Passage is a great work of art or anything, but in my opinion it is art. In your opinion it isn't - fair enough. You're right in that it's somewhat trite, but at least it's attempting something a bit more interesting than most games.

A better example might be (I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors, although I suspect you might not find that any more worthy.

Are there any video games that you would consider art? Does Portal, for instance, count?

Kongregate is an online game portal with several neat things available to players and devs. They just added the Kongregate Collabs: http://www.kongregate.com/collabs I can't wait to see what comes out of there.

Yes, I saw that episode of Lost in Space. The robot self-destructed (or something like that) after losing at the cup game.

Did that involve Judy and Maureen Robinson?!!!

Yes, I saw that episode of Lost in Space. The robot self-destructed (or something like that) after losing at the cup game.

If you like achievements, I recommend Achievement Unlocked (the poor elephant...).

And the xkcd forum has wonderful gems of information. For example, I knew that Madagascar was a bit remote, being a large island and all, so it made sense that it got mentioned in the comic, but I didn't know it could be a source of so much specific frustration for would-be pathogens (read the comments on that page about the "Pandemic-2" game).

I don't think most of those games turn a profit, or even that much in revenue. For full-time game developers who don't have a day job to pay the bills, they need to earn money with the games they make. Some go with ad revenue, donations, or micropayments to keep their games free; others, like those from the author of TFA, prefer to charge for their games.

If you would like to play only completely free games, you're certainly welcome to. I'm willing to pay for games that I want to play, and hopefully that will encourage the developers to make more games I like.

My point is that your examples are of games that don't need to make money, which completely ignores the entire indie games market. Don't devalue games because free ones exist; examine the quality and decide if it's worth paying for.

In response to the GP, Ubuntu makes money on service contracts, Firefox on donations and corporate partnerships, and Gmail from ad impressions - analogous to micropayments, donations, and ads in games.

Link here: http://www.kongregate.com/games/ArmorGames/achievement-unlocked

I mean I had just finished this game and now I can play again here! ^_^

Let's hope that achievement gives something to the user. A good example is the crown in Don't Shit Your Pants, which is obtained by getting the achievement for getting every achievement. http://www.kongregate.com/games/Rete/dont-shit-your-pants

Hey awesome, free ad space! Please check out as well my anti-tetris that's also using Box2D: Brick Yard!

I'd suggest you make shortcuts on their desktops (or put them inside a folder "Games") that are just browser bookmarks to various good online flash games. Here's some that I think are fun: http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=17727 http://www.kongregate.com/games/preecep/desktop-tower-defense-1-5 http://www.fugly.com/flash/819/flash-tetris.html http://www.runescape.com/ http://www.thegamehomepage.com/play/tangerine-panic/ I suppose another option may be SNES emulators and whatever if you can find legit free roms for them. Good luck

Awesome turn based strategy game, it used to let you pick any of the Candidates running in either primary, I dont know when they changed it, or what else they changed.

http://www.kongregate.com/games/thup/campaign-game

If you enjoy those 'shadow' puzzles, there is a free flash based game called Chronoton which exclusively deals with making copies of yourself to complete objectives.

Wow, the new idea is Free Games that make money through adverts, micropayments, donations or paid-for upgrades?

Man, I should totally recommend that idea to the people behind KoL (started in 2003, and funded entirely by donations), Kongregate (entered beta last year and gets revenue from adverts), etc..

I've had a CPU hogging issue with Firefox 3.0, and no, it wasn't flash.

I use two computers - a desktop and a notebook. My desktop still runs Firefox 2.0 (and it's beginning to crash a bit too frequently for my tastes), and my notebook runs Firefox 3.0. I export the bookmarks from my desktop, and import them onto the laptop. If I ran Firefox 2.0, it would be done very quickly (10 seconds maximum). However, Firefox 3.0 takes 1 minute to do so, given the quantity of bookmarks I have. Even if it's a "minor" section in the Firefox code, don't be suprised if there's some other portion of Firefox that's taking longer than normal, in the same way that Netscape Communicator 4.7 CPU-hogged on some cascaded tables.

As for flash, I haven't seen it hog CPU very recently. The worst case where was Flash was able to take out Firefox on certain embedded objects (i.e. as with Sonny) by somehow locking portions of Firefox's interface (i.e. you couldn't select menu items).

with /., Fark, Kongregate (if your firewall will let you), and slavehack. Those are my best suggestions if you can't work.

You mean something like this? It's a 2D game, but you need to maneuver through time as well.

http://www.kongregate.com/

Desktop Tower Defense is pretty addictive (for a while anyway):

http://www.kongregate.com/games/preecep/desktop-tower-defense

Also liked this one:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/AlejandroG/spin-the-black-circle

http://www.kongregate.com/

Desktop Tower Defense is pretty addictive (for a while anyway):

http://www.kongregate.com/games/preecep/desktop-tower-defense

Also liked this one:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/AlejandroG/spin-the-black-circle

http://www.kongregate.com/

Desktop Tower Defense is pretty addictive (for a while anyway):

http://www.kongregate.com/games/preecep/desktop-tower-defense

Also liked this one:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/AlejandroG/spin-the-black-circle

Boxhead is really fun for 2 players. http://www.kongregate.com/games/SeanCooper/boxhead-2play-rooms enjoy

I prefer Kongregate for casual gaming (read: gaming at work). Honestly, though, is there really that large of a market for this?

Not the story, this post. I have to use the story as an excuse to plug my own favorite casual gaming site, Kongregate. The cute thing about them is that most of their games are user uploads. Many of these have rough edges (my personal favorite time sink^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hgame, Desktop Tower Defense, has hand-drawn icons and sound effects that seem to have been done by somebody with a microphone and a talent for silly noises), but that just adds to the fun.

This sounds a little bit like kongregate with a little more multiplayer to it. Kongregate has some better sounding games though, and a steady flow of them. The redemption thing sounds good, except with the obvious point of how security will deal with the private information.

Obviously you've never played Heroin Hero. Sometimes, it's fun to just relax and chase the dragon.

I was introduced to a lot of great artists that I had never heard through Guitar Hero and its sequals. How else do you expect a slashdot nerd to be introduced to that kind of music-- by my first birthday, the 80s were over. I've also been pleasantly surprised by SCGMD2.. you'd think that some indie music ripped off newgrounds would suck, but some of those are real pro-quality music (here's looking at Hollywise)..

There are a lot of good games they didn't mention. Someone already mentioned Portal Flash Edition, and I already mentioned Key to Adventure. A few others are:

NewGrounds Rumble (Wii Version - For that Super Smash Bros. fix while waiting for SSBB.

Fancy Pants Adventures - Kind of like classic Sonic, but with its own appeal.

Unreal Flash - Sort of like Portal Flash Edition. Except that it's an Unreal Shoot'em Up rather than a platform/puzzle game.

Artillery Live - Simple, yet amazingly fun multiplayer take on Scorched Earth.

I've been playing games at http://www.kongregate.com/ lately. Most of the ones mentioned in TFA are online there.

Kongregate? That one wins it for me.

I misread the headline and immediately thought of the new Kongregate game.