2020 has spelled the death for a lot of things, but one that sticks out to me is Adobe Flash. With the rebranding of Adobe Flash to Adobe Animate and my browser Opera no longer supporting Flash along with Google Chrome, it really is the end of Flash games. I keep Firefox on my computer for that one purpose, it still supports Flash. Flash Games were in their peak when I was playing them in elementary school (2010-2015) and much like me, a lot of people stopped playing them in 2016-2019. And finally in 2019, it was announced that 2020 would be the discontinuing of Flash. Flash has gone through many rebrandings and changes through the years, but the concept was created in the 90s by a rarely discussed company called FutureWave. In 1996, their experamental multimedia program called Flash was sold to Macromedia. In the early 2000s, Macromedia was king. One of their former products called Clickteam Fusion, I use to make games which I think I've discussed in a previous post. Macromedia Flash 8 was a huge success when it released in 2004 which combined the ability to code and animate at the same time.
This was vital as it created an in-house way for people to make animations and programs. Many pieces of online software that weren't games were coded in ActionScript, which is the coding language of Flash 8. I own a copy of Flash 8 Professional edition and it holds up to this day. A window for animating with all the pens and keyframes you would expect, and another window for coding. It was clear that many great games could be made. The scene exploded with games and dedicated sites to go along with it. ArmorGames, Kongregate and AddictingGames were all sites I used to surf when I was nine. Thousands of little passion projects to play, with some bordering professional levels of polish. These sites still exist to this day. AddictingGames was purchased by Nickelodeon which shows how the corporate side of the industry saw the potential of these sites. This lead to the purchase of Macromedia Flash by Adobe. It was initally another huge innovation for Flash technology. It was merged with Shockwave for even more power and the application was streamlined for ease of use. It was pushed to it's limit, but Adobe was more strict about their control over Flash than Macromedia. Under Macromedia, Flash was being freely used by the users, but Adobe was more corporate than that and their idea of what the product should be was dissonant than what users wanted. The nail in the coffin was Adobe Animate. While under the hood it's quite similar to Flash, it couldn't be any farther at the same time. The only recognizable semblence of Flash in Animate is the layout of the animation tools and with Adobe's rediculous pricing, Flash was dead. The real question is this: "Why care?" What exactly did Flash do other than provide entertainment for kids? It's very important for the history of the internet. A lot of modern internet culture stems from Flash. Whether it's memes or professional IPs, a lot of modern online communities owe it to Flash. There are a lot of games that were originally Flash games on free websites that are now "real" games. One that comes to mind is Motherload. A game about mining on mars that has a sequel called Super Motherload on Steam and it costs $15. It's very well polished and professional, and it owes its origins to Flash. So many animations were originally made in Flash too! It jumpstarted so many carreers and personally, it was the first kinds of games I played. My love of video games and their development comes from Flash. And that's why I think Flash is important for the history of the internet and in gaming.
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It's officially October and that means it's time for the spooky games! You have your ususal crowd of horror games you could play, or you could take a trip to the past and see the horror games that have been forgotten. A little bit of history first: Final Fantasy had become a major success on the NES, and their new game for the SNES was going to be Final Fantasy 6 (In Japan, known as FF3 in North America). The game proved to be a major hit. People loved the stories, characters but what was a surprising hit, was the graphical style. It was very popular. Now days, Final Fantasy is in 3d, but the legacy of FF6 is carried on in the form of RPG Maker. I own two different versions of RPG Maker. The original 2000 version and their VX Ace version. I've never made anything good on them since RPGs aren't really my thing (also I don't have the work ethic) but the software let's anyone (even me) make decent looking RPGs. With the creation of the internet, people started sharing their RPGs across the world and starting in the late 2000s and into the mid 2010s, one trend emerged. While yes, RPG Maker was created with the intention of making fantasy RPGs, the ability to make your own characters AND scripting to create your own game code, it let people take the tool in a different direction. A new genera was born: RPG Horror. Sadly, the genera has faded away. I remember it's peak in the mid 2010s on YouTube. Back in the older days of YouTube (Before it was all corporate and boring), RPG Horror was taking off and accelerating YouTubers to subscriber counts never seen before. It was almost like the Minecraft craze. Many famous YouTubers created their platform on playing RPG Horror games. RPG Horror games had to get creative. With only a few tools at their disposal, it was up to creators to make something scary out of an RPG. Many successful RPG Horror games blur the lines of what can be considered an 'RPG'. Here are a few that broke the mold: Ao Oni, Ib, Crooked Man, The Witches House, Mad Father and many, many more. The Witches house in particular spearheaded the trend. I'll make sure to play as many RPG Horror games as I can for October since I think it's a very creative genera and one that deserves to be remembered.
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AuthorI am an artist as anyone else is an artist (if that makes sense). My style is abstract and I also draw cartoons. I am also a voice actor for a web-series. Archives
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