sh3-rg wrote on 27.06.10 at 11:04:37:

Only used the 'online' tag as that's where I see a lot of interesting stuff & the point was that many people instantly dismiss flash games etc as being 'crap/retro/basic/boring/2d/etc' when in fact there's loads of great stuff going on... it's not all a load of platform clones & throw-the-hoop-at-the-horse-cock' type stuff.

That's actually one of the reasons I started this thread anyway - there's a lot of variety and diversity and "anarchy" with indie development, just like the 80s. The internet brought back this thankfully.

During the 90s this almost disappeared because companies stopped accepting to publish indie developers (for example, the game Nitro was mostly programmed before it was presented to Psygnosis. And Worms IIRC. And so many other cases of 80s games). Companies began having full-time teams to churn out games. Now, when you start to scale up, you can't have every 18 year old with some talent in programming producing a game after smoking some pot and then accepting to publish it. But on the other hand, because the people that lead game development in companies are so afraid of losing their jobs that they'll bet on what sells. So, byebye indies.

Enter the internet broadband era, where everyone can host anything for people to download and see. Hooray, indies are back! But, not in the way we knew them from the past. Times have changed. People don't learn low level languages like most people were taught to back then, because there's no real reason (just buy more powerful hardware). Also, there's not a standard platform like the consoles or the home computers were. There's a plethora of tools for online content, and these aren't just Java and Flash. Take a look at Unity for example.

Anyway, point being, just because people have other tools that are not UBER1337 as optimized-to-the-brim assembly or whatever doesn't mean we have to scoff at them. I've witnessed lots of playable games and design ideas from people that have poor or no programming skills and just use game makers to realize their ideas. I've seen people draw pixel graphics that are much better than commercial games. I've seen people introduce new gameplay ideas that would have taken aeons to do with the old toolsets, but take considerably less time using new and more flexible ones.

I do realise that this is being very optimistic and utopic, and indeed you will have to dig through tons and tons of gobshite to find good games. But, heck, tell me 3 platforms that you didn't have to do this! I've been through 8 bit computers, 16 bit computers, a few consoles here and there - it's the same situation really: the turd games factor is always around 90% or more. It's your responsibility to find the good games in any given platform (or you can just keep reading this thread :P).

Don't just pass judgment because you saw a couple of games and the flash player was choking or because they were crap to play - you need to devote time to this cause (and while I'm on the subject: to the people that see the games glitch because of flash/java choking on a 3ghz machine saying "even an ST can do that", I can only say "either prove it by writing it yourself or STFU"! Writing games isn't as trivial as having a scrolling background you know. But that's for another post ;)). In my youth I played a lot of games. A lot. Every genre, good or bad, popular or not. And I've played most till the end. Perhaps out of boredom, but mostly because I like playing games. I've played so much shite that I learnt to appreciate good games and to pick them apart from crap or empty shells of games (i.e. all flashy gfx and no gameplay). When I present a game here, I've taken the time to play it for some time and decide if it's up to scratch or not.

So please kind people reading this thread, try not to be such negative xunts and try some games out! (and discover new ones and post them here :))