Swords and Sandals: A new era for gaming development?

[elliott20]

recently, I found myself playing a flash game called "Swords and Sandals 2", a flash based game where you play as a gladiator who must fight his way to glory and freedom... and it's so damn addictive... and it's now a retail game! (You can buy the full version on their website)

this made me wonder if there is in fact, a new wave of gaming niches that is actually divorced from the normal game development lifecycle. These games are ignorant to the common notion that all games must run on 3D engines, and all games must be such and such length. On a platform that seems to have quite a bit of juice behind it, I wonder if flash will eventually bring about a new era of gaming companies that focus mostly on producing small, low budget games that feature simple gameplays and yet strangely nostalgic graphics.

or maybe I'm just smoking too much crack and a business plan based around this development platform is really just a fevered madman's dream...

[Erloas]

There are a lot of flash based games around, most of them are rather simplistic though. I doubt you will see much being developed like that beyond 1-3 people sort of enthusiests/students rather then actual companies. With the vast amount of free flash based games it is going to be increditably difficult to get anyone to pay for any of them. And if people aren't going to pay for them then no one can make any money off of them.

While flash games can be a lot of fun, I won't argue that, there are a fair number of limitations on any system like that. So if people want to get around those then they have to make or modify their own engine to run the game, adding more time and difficult to making the game and increasing the amount it needs to make to pay for itself. ... it reminds me a bit of a game that came out a year or so ago (I can't think of the name right now) that was a fairly simple game some devs at a company had made to play in the downtime at work and they ended up selling it as a retail game later.
One thing though is the expectation of the customer based on what they pay for something. The standards for a free game are much lower then one you pay something for. When you factor in everything it takes to get a game to people, making it, marketing it (even if its just simple marketing), and distributing it how many would you have to sell to get anywhere? If we consider the $20 mark to be the "discount bin" of major retail games that most games end up in after about a year, and what you are offering is simplier then that you probably can't charge more then $5-10 for it. How many copies do you have to sell to pay for the bandwidth to host the files, and other business expenses, can you afford to still pay yourself?

I'm sure you can find niches for this sort of thing but its not likely to be wide spread or to ever read a large amount of development depth.

[Wehrkind]

That might depend a lot more on how you do the distribution end. PopCap Games might be a good example of a company that puts out lots of simple games graphics wise, but have a lot of fun depth in terms of gameplay.

One might be able to start a site that acts as a clearing house for Flash games, so instead of thousands of small developers trying to run and market their game on their own site, they simply make the game and put it on your site for X$, with perhaps the site taking a cut of the profits made.

I think you are right though that the number of amatuer developers that produce small games and don't need to live of it (and thus sell them for free) hurts the chances of getting to make a living selling essentially the same product. Lots of industries suffer from this, though suffer might not be the word.

[elliott20]

hmm... well, I'm not really aware of the technical limitations of flash, seeing as I'm not really a flash guru myself... But if it is that limited then okay, nevermind...

What I saw though,, is the possibility that a group of professional devs might end up using the engine to create a game that looks polished off and all that. However, upon contemplation I have to concede that there are just too many developers out there who will do it for free and without all the strings attached that corporate developers will have.

[UglyPanda]

Dude, think about what happened to Alien Hominid.

[elliott20]

well then, touche

[Duraska]

recently, I found myself playing a flash game called "Swords and Sandals 2", a flash based game where you play as a gladiator who must fight his way to glory and freedom... and it's so damn addictive... and it's now a retail game! (You can buy the full version on their website)


If you like S&S2, you'll probably love AdventureQuest. It's been around for a few years now, and when I first played S&S I immediately thought, "this game is a simplistic rip-off of AdventureQuest."

AdventureQuest link: http://www.battleon.com/

You can play for free. There's also some extra features for people who pay a one-time fee, but I've never done that because I got bored of it after a few days.

[Duraska]

Oh, and to give my opinion on the question of whether or not this is a new era for game development. I think not.

Flash games can be pretty great, but they're nowhere near the complexity of actual PC and console games. Typically they seem to be a fantastic way to get a title under your belt before you break into the "real" gaming industry. Great portfolio builders.

That said, I have nothing against Flash games. They're great for killing 15 mins here and there, but I hardly think they'll ever grow beyond being fun little internet time-killers, or simple cell-phone games.

[elliott20]

looking at the development history of alien hominid, I feel that particular flash game is really more of an exception that proved the rule. that is, it is possible for a flash game to become a mainstream title, but only if the flash game is used as a vehicle to prototype and market the main game itself. Also, the game play must be robust enough to be commercially viable.

[Sahegian]

Flash games and other internet games are a huge money maker, but not in the same genre as adventure games. Look at all the hugely popular poker and other card games out there. Go to yahoo or msn games and look at all the stuff they have. Not all of it is flash, but an awful lot is. Then you've got stuff like runequest or whatever it was that was built as an application for a web browser and was vastly popular.

There is a large market out there for games that don't require impressive hardware or hours to install. Just because they don't get the buzz that World of Warcraft is getting doesn't mean that they arn't making money.

[elliott20]

well, I think flash games CAN be commercially successful. But it needs to work through a different marketting strategy and business plan.