Some of the best games (and game ideas) I've ever seen, bar none, were on Kongregate. Flash (and particularly later versions of ActionScript) were just so good for this kind of programming, and really, even the modern web hasn't caught up yet. Looking forward though to the next iteration which is HTML5 based...
I don't think the "next big thing" here will be HTML5, though. Unity is _ridiculously_ easy and has led to large swaths of indie games on Steam - people don't quite understand just how easy it is to make games in Unity these days. You can pass without understanding coding at all to a large extent, and reminds me a _lot_ of working in Flash.
If you don't believe me, look up Sam Hogan on YouTube - or search YouTube for "unity game in 24h". I'm not saying these are all good - but it reminds me a _lot_ of how Flash enabled rapid development of game ideas.
Unity was approachable in its early days. Now it’s a mess , not to say that there aren’t many fantastic games produced using it, but anyone coming to it now is going to find it very hard to get a foothold. Having had a good experience with it when it first started making waves I installed it for a family member recently and found the whole process excruciating, none of the tutorials seem to work out the box and there’s a lot of specialised vocabulary you need to know before you can make use of the tools. It seems like Unity is competing with Unreal now rather than going for the market vacated by Flash.
Is this an ad? Not only you mention a single engine, you also sell it as super easy.
The reality is that making good games is extremely hard, and has always been.
Unity is not the first game framework, there have been many along the years. Flash being one of them (while not even designed for that originally!).
Some of them are easier, some are more featureful, some have better graphics, some are specialized into a genre etc.
While some genres need almost no code, others are full of pages of tricky game logic. And that is without counting into account the engine code.
Further, Unity had nothing to do with Steam being flooded. The actual reason is that
1- Valve pivoted into being a distribution platform,
2- they stopped curating what goes in,
3- gaming exploded and became way more mainstream (along with streaming, e-sports and programming, all which helped a lot), and
4- people started making money selling courses, degrees and content on how to make games.
You broke the site guidelines here. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? Note that they ask people not to post insinuations about astroturfing or shilling.
I know that's not a perfect answer, but it's pretty much all we have, and the approach does have one major advantage: it doesn't need to care how veiled an ad is, or if it's an ad at all.
I'm not as optimistic about thinking skills, because manipulation techniques seem to work anyhow. But barring actual evidence of abuse, I think we mostly can only try to get better at countering false or distorted information with more correct information.
But seriously, those are just a fraction of the amazingness I've experienced. I don't even think the 2D platformer Portal clone is in that list - that was amazing.
