Don't believe online game companies can earn that much money to compete with the PC and console game developing companies? Take the example of Zynga which has scaled to a massive company with 700 employees and has expansion plans in Bangalore. According to the data by Internet and Mobile Association of India, India is projected to become the third largest online market behind China and U.S. with 81 million internet users by 2013. Out of the total users that used internet in India, 41 percent used internet for gaming. Also, developers don't have to spend a lot of money and time on developing online games.
So now that you have fairly understood that online games can bring in revenue, the next question that arises is on how to go about it. This is where the expertise of Adobe kicks in. By providing free or cheap tools, Adobe is enabling developers to make flash based game in a very short amount of time. The Adobe Flash Platform makes it easy to build, distribute, monetize, and play some of the best games on the web. Different genres of games may be better suited to using different combinations of the client runtimes, developer tools, frameworks, services, and technologies that make up the Flash Platform.
The Adobe Flash Platform comprises two runtimes: Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR.
Adobe Flash Player: Flash Player is a browser plug-in that provides a multiplatform client runtime. Developers can build the game once and it will look the same whether their audience is using Internet Explorer, Firefox, or virtually any other browser, and whether they're on a Mac, PC, or Linux box. Flash Player is licensed free of charge and the download size is relatively small (less than 2MB for Windows, less than 6MB for Mac for version 10.0.42.34).
Adobe AIR: While Flash Player enables developers to view SWF content embedded in a browser, Adobe AIR lets them run that content outside of the browser, even if users are offline, right from your desktop. The Flash Player plug-in is needed to view SWF content in the browser, same way users need to have the AIR runtime installed to run AIR files outside the browser. Like Flash Player, the AIR runtime is also licensed free of charge to end users.
The two principal development tools for creating SWF-based games are Adobe Flash CS4 Professional and Adobe Flash Builder 4.
Adobe Flash CS4 Professional: This is a visual authoring environment for creating content that is played back in Flash Player. Developers can use an extensive set of drawing and shape tools as well as filters and effects to create stunning vector graphics.
Adobe Flash Builder 4: It is a developer-centric Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Where Flash CS4 Professional is a more visual tool appealing to artists and graphic designers, Flash Builder 4 (formerly Flex Builder) is for coders. The IDE is built on Eclipse, so Java developers and even those who have worked with Microsoft Visual Studio can easily use it.
Majority of the discussion sessions in the Game Developer's Conference were around the increasing online game revenues. Tridib Roy Chowdhury, Director of Products, Adobe Systems explained the path the developers should take after creating a new game. He advised developers to take help of aggregators to reach out to a wider audience. "Aggregators do promotion and spread your game. They also help in seeing that your game works on all platforms (browsers)," he said. Portals and publishers alike are trying different models of monetizing their content primarily through on-site advertisement and/or in-game micro-transactions.
Online Gaming News, March 2010
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