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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

#31

Post by protomyth »

seanalltogether wrote: post #13
dugmartin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big reason that Flash still wins for game development is that audio support sucks in HTML5 and silent games are no fun. An example - Mobile Safari only lets you play sound on one channel.

Flash is also anywhere from 2 to 3 times faster then html5+javascript for high performance games.

I'll take that as a given, but that isn't the whole story anymore. A PS/3 has better performance than Flash, but it is harder to program for, harder to distribute on, and has a much smaller market share. Flash has been losing market share for a while, and now the cost of distribution is going to be an issue. The likely successor is HTML5 (at least for browser market share). It is not as performant and the tools are not as good, but its what we got unless someone does something interesting and radical.

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

#32

Post by fogol »

From what I understand at this point, Adobe’s decision seems to want to nail Unity by confusing its developers when it comes to the new licensing scheme. It is very important for Unity to (over)explain the terms.

The cases where the new terms will apply seem to apply primarily to paid flash-based games. The problem is: who does pay for flash games? These games are not on mobile devices and on my browser I have never felt the need to purchase a Flash-based game.

So, to me, it looks more like a scare tactic aimed at Unity’s developers. This will protect the development tools that Adobe is selling. Let’s be frank: you either provide the tools for free and charge for the distribution (the Apple way)or you charge for the tools and provide the runtime/distribution for free (the Adobe way). It might be a generalization, but the gist is there. Is Adobe planning to give the tools for free? I am sure as hell they’re not. So, we should start complaiing that Adobe is not open and that they are imposing unfair controls on developers. (Does it ring a bell? – Adobe vs Apple)

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

#33

Post by moonchrome »

dhimes wrote: post #29
GavinB wrote: post #14

We recently started using the Unity3D plugin in addition to Flash. We considered packaging Unity in Flash, but there are some missing features so we went straight for the plugin. Our site is for 8-12 year old kids, so it's not the most technical audience. The Unity plugin installs in a few seconds without requiring admin rights--even most computers under corporate lockdown can install it. We've had a total of one cus…

"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 terrible performance with 3D. So even if it runs I don't expect it to be usable on my PC.

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

#34

Post by andrewfelix »

The author does point this out, but it might not be clear to everyone...

"Games and applications using either hardware accelerated Stage3D or domain memory individually do NOT require a premium features license."

So if you're just using Stage3D you're fine.

Also...

"Net revenue is calculated as revenue after taxes, payment processing fees, and social network platform fees are subtracted."

Personally I don't think taking a percentage of sales is a bad thing considering the R&D that Adobe have continued to invest in Flash. Having said that I think 9% is a ridiculously high percentage.

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

#35

Post by benologist »

ChrisLTD wrote: post #26
novalis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.adobe.com/products/flex.html <- free. All the other tools can be found for free too, specific swf packaging, etc. But now it is down to sprite sheets so...

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.

There's also FlashDevelop which is free/opensource, and then there's commercial, cheaper alternatives like FDT.

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

#36

Post by benologist »

protomyth wrote: post #31
seanalltogether wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash is also anywhere from 2 to 3 times faster then html5+javascript for high performance games.

I'll take that as a given, but that isn't the whole story anymore. A PS/3 has better performance than Flash, but it is harder to program for, harder to distribute on, and has a much smaller market share. Flash has been losing market share for a while, and now the cost of distribution is going to be an issue. The likely successor is HTML5 (at least for browser market share). It is not as performant and the tools are n…

Flash isn't harder to program for or distribute on. It's so easy to build in kids make games, and it's so easy to distribute since they're a single self-contained file that those kids can make games that get country-sized volumes of traffic playing them.

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

#38

Post by simcop2387 »

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…

That's been my experience with the ATI drivers myself. Nvidia is far far better, but you can't exactly change a laptop graphics chip. I'm using the open source ones just so that I've got a usable system.

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

#39

Post by Jare »

fogol wrote: post #32

From what I understand at this point, Adobe’s decision seems to want to nail Unity by confusing its developers when it comes to the new licensing scheme. It is very important for Unity to (over)explain the terms. The cases where the new terms will apply seem to apply primarily to paid flash-based games. The problem is: who does pay for flash games? These games are not on mobile devices and on my browser I have never…

People using the likes of Unity or UDK to create Flash games would not need the Flash tools. Adobe's Flash division simply does not sell tools to create the kind of content that requires 'advanced 3D' features. It therefore makes sense to expand their business model to include their most successful product (the Flash runtime).

I think it's absolutely fine for them to try that, but going for royalties rather than a fixed fee may just blow up in their face.

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

#40

Post by protomyth »

benologist wrote: post #36
protomyth wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take that as a given, but that isn't the whole story anymore. A PS/3 has better performance than Flash, but it is harder to program for, harder to distribute on, and has a much smaller market share. Flash has been losing market share for a while, and now the cost of distribution is going to be an issue. The likely successor is HTML5 (at least for browser market share). It is not as performant and the tools are n…

Flash isn't harder to program for or distribute on. It's so easy to build in kids make games, and it's so easy to distribute since they're a single self-contained file that those kids can make games that get country-sized volumes of traffic playing them.

I said programming & distribution on the PS/3 are harder than Flash.
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