The Era Of Flash Games Has Come To An End

After offering over 20 years of service to independent game developers and artists alike, Adobe has ended support for its Flash Player. Adobe Flash provided the internet with millions of games and a wealth of content. With this accessible platform now lost, many creators who got their start using Adobe Flash are lamenting the end of this important era in gaming history.

Former Flash game developer Jonas Richner gathered thoughts from over 20 content creators who used the service. During these short interviews, Richner asked the creators what Flash meant to them on a personal and artistic level, as well as how interconnected the community was. 

"Having grown up tinkering with animation software while programming text-based games, Flash was the first program that merged art and code in a way that I always hoped could be possible," said Tom Fulp, founder of the popular entertainment site and artist community Newgrounds.

Other developers like Sarah Northway commented on how they started their career using Flash. She discussed how incredibly accessible the service was for both game developers and players alike. As the creator of the Fantastic Contraption, a title that allowed players to build large devices that could be flung across the screen to solve puzzles, Northway noted how small Flash titles like hers became the backbone of indie gaming. This is especially true for projects like Meat Boy, which started as Flash games before eventually growing into larger franchises. 

"Flash gave all these small experimental games an instant audience, and gave rise to indie games as we know them today including my own," explained Northway.

Adobe's decision to shut down Flash was first announced in 2017. At the time, many creators were saddened, but with three years before its eventual expiration date, it took awhile for reality set in for many. According to Richner, many content creators used the service for quite some time. Mat Annal, the co-founder of the Flash game website Nitrome, discussed how he moved on to other programs.

"The demise of Flash led Nitrome to stop making Flash games and led to our future games finding homes on mobile console and PC," commented Annal. "Though the tools we use is now Unity and the stores are different the main spirit of the games we make is still firmly rooted in what we learnt making flash games."

Flash may be gone, but as Annal asserted, the spirit of game development will prevail. The media player has brought the internet so much joy over the past two decades, and that is definitely something worth celebrating.