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[medieval]

most flash games have this strange vibe that doesn't make it feel indie.

You've hit the nail on the head.

[Mitchard]

Agreed... I've seen some awesome stuff made with Flash and there's certainly nothing preventing anyone from making a really creative casual game.

In a roundabout way, there is.

The flash game business works pretty much exclusively on ad revenue and 'sponsorship', and when people are being paid $4000  for a game that takes three weeks to make and $5000 for a game that takes three months to make, it's pretty easy to stray from the path.

There is crazy money in Flash games and I'm surprised more indies aren't producing flash shovelware under pseudonyms.
Maybe they are. 

[GregWS]

Yeah, I hate to rely on "feeling" for my argument, but there is a legitimately different feeling to flash games, N included (I just can't get into it; lack of music really doesn't help).  I think the technical aspects arrogancy mentioned are likely the cause, and I really don't like the idea of browser games either.  Actually, that's my biggest complaint about the Samorost games, which I love except for that.  I guess the second one is downloadable if you buy it, which I was going to do until I found out that they ripped off a song from the band The Cinematic Orchestra in Samorost 1 (the song is called Diabolus), and that's just left a sour taste in my mouth.  I'll probably buy Machinarium anyway though 

I dunno, I think we all hate shovelware so much that we'd rather be broke than contribute to that...disease.

[Craig Stern]

If it doesn't feel indie, does that mean it feels as if it was made by a large studio? I'm not seeing what you're getting at here.

[GregWS]

No, I don't think it feels like it was made by a large studio.  In fact, I'd say certain studio games feel more indie than any flash games do.  There's just that flash "style" to flash games, even the good ones, that just feels "off."  Sort of like the Uncanny Valley theory, but with games.

[Nitro Crate]

Sort of like the Uncanny Valley theory, but with games.

 :D

[moshboy]

I don't really believe in games 'feeling indie'.. a good game is a good game, whether it be flash, java, Game Maker, commercial, shareware or whatever else. I do think there's a lot of crap.. but then there's a shitload of crap Game Maker games sitting on Yoyo Games and the only reason I know this is because I try a lot more of them then others might. Flash games just get a bad rep because they are easier to spot then say an MMF or Game Maker game that you have actually download to play.

[raiten]

I'm a flash game maker and I've been thinking alot about this recently. Why the rift between the flash community and the downloadable (indie) games community? There seems to be hardly anything connecting the two.

I can agree with some of the criticism, like how a lot of people on the flash scene are motivated by money (myself included), but that doesn't mean you don't make games "with love", as some have suggested. Someone also said that the money you earn from a flash game you made in 3 months would be only marginally more than a game that you made in 3 weeks, but I don't think that's true either. Maybe the reason most flash games aren't that ambitious is that us flash artists are all starving and can't go without a paycheck for that long?

One thing I can say though, is that while most of the games I've actually finished aren't really that innovative, I have started on a whole bunch of really cool, original games that I somehow never seem to get around to finish. I don't think that's a bigger problem for flash makers then for anyone eles, but while you lot might have all these big projects you never finish, you won't churn out smaller games to keep you afloat. I don't see what would motivate you "downloadies" to release a game that the community wouldn't appreciate. When it comes to flash, it doesn't really matter how generative or lacking of soul the game is, there will always be somebody who will pay you for it.

Also, I think a lot of you are pixel fetishists and won't accept us "flashies" as indies because of that. That's where that "feeling" a lot of you are talking about comes from, I would guess. I can agree to an extent though, retro just feels more "right", somehow. But it is kind of silly when you bring it up as an actual argument.

[William Broom]

Yeah, I think it's a lot in the graphics. To me, Flash's vector graphics look bad. There's just something about them. If I had to put it in words I would say they're too clean, especially the ones that use tweens for animation. I think the little Rayman-style floating hands in Madness Combat are very telling, because that's basically how all tween animation looks: a bunch of disconnected objects trying to look like they're stuck together.

[muku]

But, as has been said before, there's nothing to stop anyone from doing a pure bitmap-based Flash game. It's true however that there are very few of them. Probably has to do with how Flash has vector graphics since the beginning while the Bitmap class has, unless I'm mistaken, only been added one or two versions of the Flash player back.

Not that I'm saying that pixel graphics are the only way to do a good game. I mean, N was great, and it used vector graphics.

[mewse]

In the Flash world, a developer can take Match 3, drop a new tileset on it, and that's all it takes to make easy cash at the local Flash portal.  In fact, that's probably the most lucrative strategy a Flash developer can follow.

Or put differently:  the most effective way to succeed financially with Flash-based casual games is the same as the way to succeed financially with huge mainstream commercial games:  make the same game over and over again, with different or improved graphics in each iteration.

And it scares the hell out of me that the same business model is so effective at both ends of the scale.  Because does that imply that Indie games (which typically inhabit the space in between casual games and commercial games) are doomed to the same fate;  endlessly re-releasing the same games with modified graphics, in the hope of re-selling the same game to the same audience over and over again?

In the end, are we just selling soap, and just add a new miracle ingredient each year, so that people will buy our new soap instead of using the old soap which, when we're being brutally honest with ourselves, actually worked just as well as the new stuff?

I suppose that maintaining retro graphics is one way to deny the ever-improving-visuals cycle that both casual and commercial games are stuck in at the moment.  But they also make most indie games become niche games, never experienced by the vast majority of people who play video games (in much the same way that interactive fiction is a niche genre;  most game-players find the interface to be unapproachable and unattractive).

So I don't know.   

[muku]

In the Flash world, a developer can take Match 3, drop a new tileset on it, and that's all it takes to make easy cash at the local Flash portal.  In fact, that's probably the most lucrative strategy a Flash developer can follow.

Or put differently:  the most effective way to succeed financially with Flash-based casual games is the same as the way to succeed financially with huge mainstream commercial games:  make the same game over and over again, with different or improved graphics in each iteration.

An alternate point of view: the Flash market really works quite differently. While with major games, the trend seems to be towards ever more complex games with production values which even surpass those of most major movies, the trend with Flash games is quite the opposite: make the simplest thing that could possibly work, because the additional time you could put into better graphics and more polish pays off sublinearly. That is to say, you might work twice as long on your game but get only 1.5x times the payoff.

[Valter]

Kongregate awards money to developers only for good games. They have to be highly unique or executed very well to get paid. The weekly and monthly contests actually give some motivation for making good games. It's a decent counterpoint to your "just make a shitty game and collect ad money" point.

[Craig Stern]

In the Flash world, a developer can take Match 3, drop a new tileset on it, and that's all it takes to make easy cash at the local Flash portal.  In fact, that's probably the most lucrative strategy a Flash developer can follow.

Or put differently:  the most effective way to succeed financially with Flash-based casual games is the same as the way to succeed financially with huge mainstream commercial games:  make the same game over and over again, with different or improved graphics in each iteration.

Yeah--and the way to make an "indie" game with game maker that everyone adores is to make yet another side-scrolling platformer with slightly different pixel graphics, right? I'm not convinced that Flash is somehow the bigger offender here.

[raiten]

In the Flash world, a developer can take Match 3, drop a new tileset on it, and that's all it takes to make easy cash at the local Flash portal.  In fact, that's probably the most lucrative strategy a Flash developer can follow.

I'd like to say I think that's definitely a myth. Not that I'm the most experienced flash developer, but in my own experience, going the extra mile to improve your game definitely pays off. Original stuff does get more attention, and might get picked up by blogs and maybe even newspapers. The more attention you get, the more non-exclusive licenses you'll be able to sell. An old-game-new-tiles will get one exclusive sponsorship, and that'll be it.

An alternate point of view: the Flash market really works quite differently. While with major games, the trend seems to be towards ever more complex games with production values which even surpass those of most major movies, the trend with Flash games is quite the opposite: make the simplest thing that could possibly work, because the additional time you could put into better graphics and more polish pays off sublinearly. That is to say, you might work twice as long on your game but get only 1.5x times the payoff.

This is not true either, look at Kongregate's Premium program and also, compare the complexity of flash games now with those of 5 years back. Before the flash market became obsessed with money, it was hard to find anything almost advanced that wasn't a half-finished demo. The money is actually helping to motivate people to finish their games. Also, as I said above, in my own experience, the extra effort does definitely pay off.

[dEnamed]

Hrm.
I think the issue has a lot to do with reputation.
Personal fame, reckognition and Drama.

Indie Developers are treated as Rockstars and some of them behave exactly like that. As an Indie Developer you have to make yourself stand out as a person before anything. If you're a celebrity, your games can be total crap and people will still swarm all over it. On the flipside, if no one knows you, your games can be gems and people will completely tear them apart because of minor flaws.
So in the Indie scene that is obsessed with Style and Challenge, one can't walk in and use a platform that is known for its ease of use. RPG Maker Games are often frowned upon, even if they have beautiful sprites and stories. Gamemaker games are often frowned upon, they get torn apart over minor issues. Flash Games, well where do I start? Easy animation, Easy graphics, not having to deal with executeables (and thus Computer Issues), mostly point and click...

To a community so obssessed with style, using something easy seems to be considered as cheating. And cheaters don't have skill, so surely those games must all be crap?!?

Mind you, I'm oversketching this a bit, I'm also not pointing a finger at anyone in specific, just the "rockstar" black sheeps. I'm also not trying to offend anyone, I'm merely trying to explain why I think Flash Games are not considered Indie.

[PenguinHat]

Hrm.
I think the issue has a lot to do with reputation.
Personal fame, reckognition and Drama.

Indie Developers are treated as Rockstars and some of them behave exactly like that. As an Indie Developer you have to make yourself stand out as a person before anything. If you're a celebrity, your games can be total crap and people will still swarm all over it. On the flipside, if no one knows you, your games can be gems and people will completely tear them apart because of minor flaws.
So in the Indie scene that is obsessed with Style and Challenge, one can't walk in and use a platform that is known for its ease of use. RPG Maker Games are often frowned upon, even if they have beautiful sprites and stories. Gamemaker games are often frowned upon, they get torn apart over minor issues. Flash Games, well where do I start? Easy animation, Easy graphics, not having to deal with executeables (and thus Computer Issues), mostly point and click...

To a community so obssessed with style, using something easy seems to be considered as cheating. And cheaters don't have skill, so surely those games must all be crap?!?

Mind you, I'm oversketching this a bit, I'm also not pointing a finger at anyone in specific, just the "rockstar" black sheeps. I'm also not trying to offend anyone, I'm merely trying to explain why I think Flash Games are not considered Indie.

I would personally disagree based on my personal observations. Lots of "indie" devs use Game Maker, with cactus and Messhof being the most famous two. The issue is not one of "made with Flash" vs "made with something else". The main issue is one of "made for a flash portal" vs "made for the "indie" crowd/for your own benefit/to express something"

Flash itself is just another way of coding a game, that has it's own benefits and drawbacks (easy to deploy on the internet, no need for download, can run on pretty much anything, can be placed in Flash portals, can be sluggish, can have a weird "tweened plastic" look if not done well, you cannot use the right mouse button)

Really, every successful game has millions of clones. It just happens that flash portals make a living from bringing those clones into one place, and it also happens that it is a lot easier to make money from Flash games than other video games because of those Flash portals.

[medieval]

Sometimes it's the bad use of gradients

[Mitchard]

Easy animation, Easy graphics, mostly point and click...

Not sure what your basis for these are. Lazy animation and lazy graphics, sure, but that's up to the user. I wouldn't say that it was mostly  point and click though, definitely much less so than other 'easy' options like Game Maker.

Also I would like to point out that Castle Crashers was entirely drawn and animated in Flash. I personally think some of it's pretty weak, but the graphics are generally being applauded by commercial game critics.

[muku]

In the Flash world, a developer can take Match 3, drop a new tileset on it, and that's all it takes to make easy cash at the local Flash portal.  In fact, that's probably the most lucrative strategy a Flash developer can follow.

Or put differently:  the most effective way to succeed financially with Flash-based casual games is the same as the way to succeed financially with huge mainstream commercial games:  make the same game over and over again, with different or improved graphics in each iteration.

Yeah--and the way to make an "indie" game with game maker that everyone adores is to make yet another side-scrolling platformer with slightly different pixel graphics, right? I'm not convinced that Flash is somehow the bigger offender here.

Hear hear. It's a bold thing to say on this forum, but the man has a point. Not that I don't like these retro platformers, they are often a lot of fun, but they certainly aren't the pinnacle of innovation and experimentation that the indie scene so often prides itself on.