Game Devs Predict Death of Flash, Installed Games

New submitter rescendent writes "In an interview with Massively, Illyriad Games developers Ben Adams and James Niesewand predict the death of Flash, the rise of HTML5, and a long-term shift away from installed games. Quoting: 'The major advantages that boxed set or download games have had over browser-based games are local storage and direct access to the graphics and audio engines. Those barriers are being smashed apart by HTML5. ... Especially for MMO game developers, I personally don't believe that developers have any real long-term choice about embarking on this path or not. Ultimately, I believe it's either browser-based or obsolescence. If you don't do it, your competitors will, and they'll be making games that work identically on more device platforms, on more browsers, on more operating systems. It's going to take a very long time to get there, though, but this change has begun now, and we firmly believe that HTML5 is the future.' With Microsoft joining the ranks of Apple and not supporting Flash in Windows 8, there's definitely a risk to Flash. But will browser-based games really replace installed games?"

Comments

Few years or decades ?

[zaibazu]

Internet on the customer side needs to be several magnitutes faster to accomodate the same graphic fidelity

Re:Few years or decades ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. I'd love to see how they handle streaming gigs worth of game data over a browser every single time every single person wants to play a game. Browser games will be fine for simple stuff, but it will be a long time before they can do something like a modern game, which by the time they do, the required amount of data will have increased.

These "devs" are clueless idiots. It's no wonder why their companies are unknown and have nothing to show for themselves.

Not with our current tools

[Tridus]

Sorry, but you're not going to be able to replicate World of Warcraft in Javascript. It's not happening. Ever. The language just isn't built to do something that huge without collapsing under its own poor design decisions... not to mention minor details like needing to stream and locally cache several GB of textures and audio files.

This only flies if you believe the future of "gaming" is what Flash games currently are: small, simple time wasters. For anything that's currently considered an AAA game, the idea that this stuff will replace it is a joke.

Re:Not with our current tools

[Anonymous Coward]

IAAPGD (I am a professional game developer), and I'd like to answer without the Slashdot-typical hate-spewing like in your example.

There is a simple fact that will never change:

A game written in compiled machine code, running on a big box, will always be able to offer more than (multi-)interpreted platforms. Let alone limited mobile ones.
So those games will always be able to offer more bling, physics, enemy smartness, etc.
But those are only two (aesthetics and technology) of the four parts that every game consists of. And they are factors. (They are multiplied with each other.)

The other two are story of and gameplay (the essence of games).
Which can mostly be done perfectly well even with a sheet of paper, a pencil and a couple of rocks. (But without the aesthetics and all the technology, immersion will be much harder to achieve.)

And currently we have the situation, that big "game" companies have concentrated so much on the bling, that their output barely qualifies as games at all. While small independent developers rise up and do beautiful things with gameplay and story in the most limited environments. (Yes, like Flash.)
This obligatory XKCD hits the nail on the head (but doesn't know the above reasons): http://xkcd.com/484/

So actually, Flash will simply be replaced by XHTML5 with JS, WebGL, web sockets, SVG, etc. Because it offers more features (like real 3D, and standardized open formats/interfaces). And as a result, small independents without big budgets will use it.

That's why think big companies abandoning the PC was the best thing that ever happened to the game "industry". May they go down with their locked-down consoles and Christmas tree ball games (shiny paper-thin outside, and hollow inside). While we fill the PCs with games that actually resonate with people and make them feel something again. (Tell me how you feel when you finished "The Company Of Myself", or when you are about to enter the water after having been to Saturn in "Dolphin Olympics". Or just when hearing an audio log in good old System Shock. :)

Oh, and the only reason they don't want installed games, is because they are part of the organized crime that invented the lie of "intellectual property" for their protection racket. We independents are not part of this. In fact we found out that we make more money and gain more respect, by staying in reality (software, by the laws of physics, is not a product and can not be sold, owned or stolen. Software development is a service.) and being nice to our clients.

Who would have thought? ^^

Stop the presses!

[Bieeanda]

Two guys that you have never heard of, with an axe to grind and a desperate need for publicity, say something trollish-- er, provocative.

Seriously. This isn't news, it's a repost of someone else's slow news day.

Re:No, it won't replace installed games.

[smelch]

Wow, you're right, in a distant future games of today will be streamable. But what about games of the distant future?