<story><title>I still use Flash</title><url>https://foon.uk/how-flash-2022/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dj_mc_merlin</author><text>I remember creating a simple &amp;quot;catch the falling X&amp;quot; game in Flash 20 years ago. It was basic, but had everything you&amp;#x27;d expect in a beginner project: points, multiple game states&amp;#x2F;screens, a victory condition, basic story (which was just a screen at the beginning, like NES). The thing is, I was a literal child and I also had no clue how to code -- I did everything by following tutorials and gluing together code I copy&amp;amp;pasted&amp;amp;modified. And it worked! And people played it!&lt;p&gt;They all thought it was pretty shit, but to me it was more important that some random person across the globe genuinely picked up something I wrote, played it, and then wrote up a review of it.&lt;p&gt;I showed it to my parents and they immediately started pushing me to learn programming.. and well here I am now. Thanks Flash.&lt;p&gt;It blows my mind that no one has made a tool like that in so long. It had the same quality as Excel, where any non-technical person could just look up a tutorial, right click a bit, and make something usable. Why has the pinnacle of ease of use in game creation been achieved and never replicated since?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zackmorris</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s how I feel about HyperCard. Some apps were so ahead of their time that when they were axed, nothing comparable replaced them.&lt;p&gt;I believe that this is due to a tragedy of the commons in the software industry. We&amp;#x27;re all so creative, with so many dreams, but spend the majority of our lives working 40 hour weeks to outcompete each other and make rent. Then when someone wins the internet lottery, they succumb to their ego and do a bunch of stuff in business to hoard even more wealth, rather than working to reform the system which keeps so many others down.&lt;p&gt;I would very much like to write a programming language, a blogging tool, a web framework, a game, a game development tool, etc etc etc. But I never will. Most of the people reading this never will either.&lt;p&gt;So I endure. I meditate, I practice stoicism, I go to the gym. But I had to let my dreams die for my own self-preservation because opportunity cost grew to consume my entire psyche. I simply can&amp;#x27;t think about all of the other things I could be doing while I have to work. And all I do is work.&lt;p&gt;There doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to be much help coming in terms of UBI or having N people split a 40 hour workweek or forming artist communes for makers. Sure, we hear the occasional stories. But it&amp;#x27;s like we&amp;#x27;re all waiting around for a billionaire to liberate us, rather than creating a scalable cooperative system to sustain all of us right now today.&lt;p&gt;What I&amp;#x27;m saying is that until we look beyond the technical challenges and see that the problem is subjugation, we&amp;#x27;ll never get free of the lackluster tools, because we&amp;#x27;ll never have time to make better ones.</text></comment>
<story><title>I still use Flash</title><url>https://foon.uk/how-flash-2022/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dj_mc_merlin</author><text>I remember creating a simple &amp;quot;catch the falling X&amp;quot; game in Flash 20 years ago. It was basic, but had everything you&amp;#x27;d expect in a beginner project: points, multiple game states&amp;#x2F;screens, a victory condition, basic story (which was just a screen at the beginning, like NES). The thing is, I was a literal child and I also had no clue how to code -- I did everything by following tutorials and gluing together code I copy&amp;amp;pasted&amp;amp;modified. And it worked! And people played it!&lt;p&gt;They all thought it was pretty shit, but to me it was more important that some random person across the globe genuinely picked up something I wrote, played it, and then wrote up a review of it.&lt;p&gt;I showed it to my parents and they immediately started pushing me to learn programming.. and well here I am now. Thanks Flash.&lt;p&gt;It blows my mind that no one has made a tool like that in so long. It had the same quality as Excel, where any non-technical person could just look up a tutorial, right click a bit, and make something usable. Why has the pinnacle of ease of use in game creation been achieved and never replicated since?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>CharlesW</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;It blows my mind that no one has made a tool like that in so long. […] Why has the pinnacle of ease of use in game creation been achieved and never replicated since?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;FWIW it never went away¹ and targets standards-based runtimes these days. I&amp;#x27;m sure there are many kids every month having the same kind of epiphanies with it!&lt;p&gt;That being said, because Adobe Animate is marketed as a tool for professionals rather than kids&amp;#x2F;enthusiasts, orders of magnitude more kids are having the kind of experience you had with Minecraft and Roblox instead.&lt;p&gt;¹ &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adobe.com&amp;#x2F;products&amp;#x2F;animate.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.adobe.com&amp;#x2F;products&amp;#x2F;animate.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>