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What Adobe’s new pricing for Flash means for social game developers

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Re: What Adobe’s new pricing for Flash means for social game developers

#41

Post by sesqu »

moonchrome wrote: post #33
dhimes wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The Unity Web Player is not currently compatible with the operating system that you appear to be using." Linux (Mint 12 / Ubuntu 11.10)

Frankly, even if the plugin is available, IMO the GPU drivers are so unreliable that it would be a hell to support and work around all the different bugs for such a limited audience, and I'm writing that on OpenSUSE 12.1 developing in gVim and experiencing random Gnome Shell crashes every 30-60 minutes (shell just shows background image then comes up in 2-3 secs) on ATI drivers. Opensource drivers are stable but have…

Unity does have an experimental plugin for Linux systems, running on NaCl. It's fairly functional, provided your graphics drivers play nice. I definitely wouldn't recommend it for Facebook games, but for teenaged kids it may well suffice.

Re: What Adobe’s new pricing for Flash means for social game developers

#44

Post by shabble »

marshray wrote: post #42
seanp2k2 wrote: post #37

Adobe just figured out a new scheme to make themselves even less appealing. Bravo.

I wonder how long Oracle is going to be able to hold themselves back from doing the same to Java?

Get your first 10 JPanel()'s free!

Re: What Adobe’s new pricing for Flash means for social game developers

#45

Post by novalis »

p4lindromica wrote: post #30
ChrisLTD wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. The SDK is free, but it's not like you're getting XCode or Visual Studio with that download. Their IDE (based on Eclipse, right?) is $500.

The flex IDE is based on Eclipse and it's awful to use

FlashDevelop and Flex work out fine for some people. Let us not allow one IDE to spoil all the fun out of something.

Re: What Adobe’s new pricing for Flash means for social game developers

#46

Post by marshray »

radley wrote: post #23
Zirro wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I can't understand why Adobe is making these decisions when they're competing with an upcoming technology that has a such large & growing fanbase." I think Adobe is currently a divided company. Part of it want to remain with Flash and view HTML5 as a competitior, while the other part is into HTML5 and see it as the future. Adobe makes their money from development tools, after all. The technology used to present the…

I don't see a division between Flash & HTML. I see it as a division between their legacy as a creative platform vs. their focus on enterprise SaaS.

I see it as a bunch of MBAs hearing of Facebook's user base, Zynga's Flash games, and Apple's app store revenue and being driven mad with jealousy and using the term "uncaptured revenue" to convince themselves that this course of action is right.

Of course that's silly and I'm revealing my biases here a little, but sometimes this degree of cynicism turns out to be right.

Re: What Adobe’s new pricing for Flash means for social game developers

#47

Post by novalis »

atjoslin wrote: post #43

Flash is getting less and less useful for web-browser development. Javascript + HTML5 is so much better.

I think that was always the natural order for it. Only some special commercial/marketing projects called for Flash. You ended up with menus made in Flash at some point for no other reason than an actionscript coder got the job... it happens. Web-browsing and rich content got mixed back there... let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Re: What Adobe’s new pricing for Flash means for social game developers

#48

Post by novalis »

protomyth wrote: post #22
novalis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot possibly put HTML5, mostly three.js at this time (thank you Mr Doob, you rock Sir), at the same level as what Flash is able to do on a browser or what Flex is able to do on mobile. It is also not supported in some present browsers. Neither targets "social gaming" at all. Adobe is doing HD specs at 60 fps, full GPU render support. What other cross plat does this in the browser at this point and what other c…

I actually do not think HTML5 is a replacement for Flash (thus my second paragraph). Regardless of the utility and capability of Flash, it is no longer a universal platform. Since it is losing market share (browser with flash / browsers without), I would assume people in the social gaming area are starting to look at other platforms with HTML5 having the largest market share.

"...it is no longer a universal platform." Was it ever ? Media diffusion is not something anyone should disregard depending on brand. Present penetration numbers are still impressive unless you have other data. That creates a blind spot in the rear view mirror for someone wanting to isolate social gaming in a area where only one technology is enough, sometimes even the only one that is "acceptable".

Let us see how people like Mr Doob push javascript and the progress that comes in adopting easier render pipelines, it is promissing at this point. maybe everyone is going to want to have the next V8. Maybe webkit, html5 and canvas3D are going to have to get along in the end because social gaming is not part of a area but it exists in a place with some irregular border lines. Maybe some big engine comes and saves the day.

Re: What Adobe’s new pricing for Flash means for social game developers

#49

Post by vacri »

while this move by Adobe looks bizarre, I'm worried about the random numbers thrown up in the paragraph about revenue. He's claiming it takes $2.50 to acquire a user, leaving $0.50 for everything else (development, support, hosting, etc).

Am I missing something, or does he really spend 5/6ths of his income on marketing his product?

Re: What Adobe’s new pricing for Flash means for social game developers

#50

Post by novalis »

marshray wrote: post #46
radley wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a division between Flash & HTML. I see it as a division between their legacy as a creative platform vs. their focus on enterprise SaaS.

I see it as a bunch of MBAs hearing of Facebook's user base, Zynga's Flash games, and Apple's app store revenue and being driven mad with jealousy and using the term "uncaptured revenue" to convince themselves that this course of action is right. Of course that's silly and I'm revealing my biases here a little, but sometimes this degree of cynicism turns out to be right.

A lot of times.
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