That was just stupid, how can this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHkw7SGRr40

Compare to this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TluRVBhmf8w ?

Surely these flash games are free right... so how is it much of a business.

Koster loves flash because the official 2D client for Metaplace is written in Actionscript and runs in Flash.(Metaplace is his current project)

You CAN make pretty games with flash, as long as you don't go overboard and try to do fancy 3d stuff with it.

Chicken Shoot, while popular, isn't even that GOOD of a Flash game.... There are MUCH better ones available, just check out Newgrounds or Kongregate for proof of that.

bullshit, the important number is the generated revenue. And here flash games cannot even talk to consoles. Typical bullshit.
StarWars Galaxy sucked anyway.

First let me say that SWG only sucked when they decided to run through major game design changes after the game launched.

You are correct that the revenue stream for Flash based apps is normaly low, but Metaplace is a different beast than your standard Flash game and Raph does have a point about how many people play web games and have the Flash player installed.

Metaplace is designed to make money in two ways. Advertisements and the purchase of Metabucks for various uses. He's using Flash as a client for an online, multiplayer, user-content heavy gaming service, basically.

Flash is also a good way for indie devs to get their work out to a large audience and possibly get some publishing deals that allow for a more lucrative revenue stream..(See Alien Homonid, N, LineRider etc.)

Star Wars Galaxies was one of my favorite games of all time. I adore sandbox games, and I adore skill based games. I heap praise on complex game mechanics, and having dynamic differentiated classes. I applaud the intended design for the game. There was nothing like it, and there probably won't be another game in its vein for another decade.

That said the game had two problems. The first it arrived to the market broken and unfinished. Broken classes, game breaking bugs, exploiting, broken items, and well just about everything came broken. The response from Sony was to spend a few months tying down this or that, but in the end it was bailing water out of a sinking ship with a teacup.

The second problem was that finally when Sony was forced into a corner over these issues which they fully deserved. They had procrastinated for years in some cases. Their response was to break things, or to radically redesign things which also arrived broken, and more to the point wasn't what their paying customers asked for or wanted.

The game was a massive failure not in the area of original concept which was very good, and had it been delivered in a quality fashion the game might have millions of subscribers rather then perhaps at most fifty thousand subscribers. The problem was in how Sony does business. They basically wanted customers to beta test their product and pay for the privilege. Then when those customers demanded service for their payment Sony refused, or made false promises to get around to it before the end of time. Which was in three or four weeks I promise.

I think Koster has some good ideas, and its probably for the best he isn't working with Sony anymore. However there is enough blame to go around in regards to that game. The game had so many quality issues that it did show a distinct lack of direction, or to put it this way the priorities didn't get handled the way they should have. Even the basic combat classes arrived unfinished, but you had a fully functional housing system?

True, hehe..  I think the real problem with SWG is that there were too many people pulling the game in too many directions for it to really succeed..

You had Lucasarts and SOE corporate handlers exerting their influcence(sometimes at odds with each other), Raph and his team exerting theres and the rabid Star Wars fanbase throwing fits over every little announcement.

I'm of the mind that the game would have worked BETTER if it had never been associated with Star Wars to begin with.

Yadda, yadda, yadda...

Yep, Flash is gonna overtake consolegaming.... lol

But how much money can a flash game make ... I bet not as much as Halo or Pokemon . I know that there are many flah users , but hes oversatimating it IMO ...