![]() ‘Even now, 15 years after it is launched, I get emails from adults who tell me they loved my Flash games as a kid and want to know where they can play them. In fact, his most popular game, Swords and Sandals 2, which has since been rereleased through his studio, Whiskeybarrel, attracted players in the hundreds of millions. With almost 100% of online PCs plugged into Flash, Joyce says the possibilities for independent game developers were endless. Flash exploded onto the web and with it came this wonderful Wild West of games, interactive experiments, full screen video.’ ‘Back in 1999, my first real industry job was as a multimedia developer.’ He says, continuing, ‘there was this explosion of interest in this new “motion based” web, for lack of a better term. An independent game developer by trade, Joyce had used Flash on and off for over two decades. This could partly be the tint of rose-coloured glasses, though. READ: The most anticipated Australian games of 2021 ‘These days, many of the creative types steer well clear of the web and have moved into other industries.’ Alternative software has struggled to fill the gap left by Flash: ‘From a purely informational standpoint, the rise of HTML5 has been a boon, but the web is a much less interesting place to be these days.’ Animators, musicians, game designers, programmers, video makers, all used this one wonderful tool to collaborate. ‘But in the hands of skilled designers, an interactive Flash piece could be a thing of beauty. This is not to say that Flash was an apotheosis of multimedia: ‘Flash was, admittedly, in the wrong hands, capable of making monstrous, unusable websites that assaulted the eyes and ears’, Joyce admits. ‘What that meant for the industry, and to an extent internet culture here in Australia, was a real shift away from the creative web,’ he says. ‘Jobs wanted everyone to use Apple hardware and software only – and he wanted the end user to pay for it.’ As a result, Joyce says, ‘the industry’s faith in Flash was shaken to a point that it never really recovered.’ Though Adobe could have done more to address the security issues with Flash, Apple had pulled the plug. Joyce suggests that this was primarily a business move, separate from the criticisms outlined in Jobs’ open letter. But in the hands of skilled designers, an interactive Flash piece could be a thing of beauty.’ ‘Flash was, admittedly, in the wrong hands, capable of making monstrous, unusable websites that assaulted the eyes and ears. Overnight, Apple banned it from all of their devices. Seeking to minimise the competition that Flash posed to the App Store, Jobs had written a statement outlining his beef with Flash, not all of which was completely warranted: he argued that Flash drained the battery life of early smartphones too quickly, and that it presented too many security issues. ‘The thunder punch against Flash was Steve Jobs’ infamous Thoughts on Flash letter back in 2010.’ ![]() ‘This was a long time in the making,’ says Joyce. ![]() But in terms of changes to web gaming software, the phaseout of Flash actually represents quite a lengthy process. Initially, I wondered how Flash could have faded so quickly, from being connected to millions of websites, to none at all in the space of ten years. I spoke to Oliver Joyce, former Newgrounds game developer, about the rise and fall of Flash, and what it means for online gaming. READ: Itch.io’s games aren’t ‘unspeakable’ they’re groundbreaking This year, as of January 2021, Flash has officially stopped running, disabling all its games, videos and animations across the world wide web. ![]() Just ten years ago, according to Adobe’s own numbers, Flash was installed on 99% of internet-connected desktop PCs, and thousands of free, browser-based games and animations were collected on websites like Newgrounds and Miniclip. If you’re old enough to remember the joys of Zynga’s original Farmville, the inexplicably popular Salad Fingers, or the cult classic Homestuck, you might feel strongly about the recent phaseout of Adobe Flash Player-a quick loading plugin for multimedia, animation and video that allowed internet users in the 90s and 2000s to create unique online content that would go on to transform digital cultures. ![]() I didn’t have internet at home until I was 18, but by then I’d already spent countless hours at public libraries and friends’ places playing Adobe Flash games, which were for me a source of endless comfort. Seeing the game screen replaced by a grey tombstone icon, I saw memories buried under the weight of the net’s transformation. It might have been a long time coming, but Flash’s disappearance hit me hard when I logged onto Neopets in early 2021 in a bid to distract myself from the isolation of the pandemic. ![]()
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