Filed under: Business, Games, Internet, Features, Adobe
The tipping point for online games
Have browser based games reached their tipping point? The evidence says yes. And this will quickly lead to a huge influx of better and more accessible browser based games pushing an old industry into the mainstream for the first time. Let me explain.Just a few days ago we posted a review of a little Flash game called Elements TD. We weren't the only ones. In less than two weeks the traffic to the game has grown by over ten thousand percent. Yes, you read that right. 10,000%! Over a million hits a day. Currently the game hogs over 40 Gigabits a day of creator David Scott's bandwidth.
Why is this one example important? Because it illustrates the rapid rise of Flash game development.
In-browser games have been around for a long time. "Arcade" websites like Yahoo Games, Pogo, and Shockwave have arisen to collect these games into one place and market them. Despite respectable success by many of these competitors, the quality of online gaming has continued to lack luster. Flash Elements TD shows us that it doesn't have to be that way and that a great game can be developed independently and marketed successfully. It also shows how great ideas can be taken from existing desktop games and turned into viral web based epidemics.
And an epidemic in online game creation is about to overtake us.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
