I'm of two minds on this one. On the one hand, I completely agree with you. With all the middleware, physics engines, and other tools available for Triple-A game development, why aren't there better toolkits for casual games?

I recently wrote an article & tutorial for Macromedia on Flash MX Pro 2004. The main additions to Flash in the Pro version have to do with Form Screens, or the ability to treat Flash more like a visual programming environment than like a nonlinear time-based authoring environment. This can help game developers, but the benefits are incremental.

Flash has an installed base of over 97% of the Internet. Last I checked, Shockwave was between 50 - 60%. With these numbers, it's hard to argue with the platform, and it would be nice if MM supported it more specifically as a game authoring environment.

On the other hand, Macromedia has always taken something of a backseat to the actual uses of its technology. This is a growing trend; Microsoft has their "your potential, our passion" schtick, which seems to offer a simultaneous open hand and caveat emptor.

We talk a lot about emergence in games; software IDEs are highly emergent systems. They give developers like us sets of simple tools that we can combine to create complex systems. Still, there are a number of really basic building blocks that MM doesn't offer as components in Flash or Director. I'm thinking of things like an isomorphic rendering grid, or a prebuilt A* pathfinding component. I guess third parties could develop these and integrate them into their IDEs, but MM certainly isn't publicizing this kind of thing as much as they should, especially given the growth of the medium and the popularity of their platform.

vbnmra nodhkhoel.

Are you serious? Macromedia Director and Flash are great tools for developing games. The problem is the fact that not everyone can create a compelling game, much less an advergame.

Having a Flash guy on staff who can make something bounce in a banner ad is not the same as working with a talented team of game developers and marketers to create a successful advergaming campaign. It is like hiring someone to shoot a TV campaign because they have a video camera. Or using someone to write body copy because they know Microsoft Word.

An advergame does not have to be a huge 3D experience. I have seen dozens of well thought out, captivating, online games and advergames that didn't involve skateboarding or racing in a 3d world.

A leading site in the world of Advergaming is www.kewlbox.com. It is a game site dedicated to Advergames and casual games. The group that produces the games for Kewlbox is a group called Blockdot. They have created over a hundred great casual gaming experiences for a wide variety of clients.

They generate over 500,000 game plays a day, tracking time spent per game play (some upwards of 30 minutes a session), click through to a call to action (2%-10%) and registering over 1 million users.

A successful Advergame campaing is more than just putting a logo in a game. It takes a creative mind, to produce something clever and to integrate a marketing message that speaks for the brand while delivering an entertaining experience for the intended audience.

Advergaming is delivering and kudos to the teams of developers and marketers who are driving the medium.

As the people at Kewlbox say, they deliver the upside to downtime.

I have bought cool panasonic camera on this site !