Before another year zips by...

Well, my we have been busy, just a quick update, and some points I will expand on:

• We developed 11 mobile games and 8 themes in one year, this explains why I didn't have the time to blog, it was well worth it though, we hit 6 million downloads!
• The best gaming experience is still on a desktop, but that's not where the market is, and not the technology either (yet)
• PC Desktops do have some serious value in terms of digital production, can I ever go back to a Macbook Pro / OSX if I make a living using Adobe / Nokia software?
• Great ideas in the high-end phone market, might be forgotten once these capabilities become available to the rest of the market.
• Recycling technology and using your domestic market (China/India) to enable is a winning strategy.
• The first company to enable offline mobile ad-serving will get a lot of business (including ours)
• The only thing Android has to worry about is Android.
• Both Apple and Google will start having problems once they have a legacy of devices with different capabilities, which will eventually happen.
• As Asia becomes richer, it will also become more creatively diverse and important in terms of shaping future design.
• Flash Lite is still grossly underestimated and underutilized.
• Will anyone remember Angry Birds, any mobile game in 5 years? What is the lifespan of a mobile game?

That's it for now!

Flash vs Apple - for us that actually develop Flash

I have seen fellow Flash developers go through highs and lows trying to imagine what kind of future there is for them, not just with the current dispute between Adobe/Flash and Apple, but in general over the past 5 years as mobile has become more dominant. Here are my thoughts, and when the next spat comes out, I suspect this might still be relevant:

I'm overjoyed about all the drama going on between Adobe and Apple - it's never wise to start a publicity war against the masters of PR (Apple). The most obvious thing is that Flash is getting much more attention since Youtube got them back in the game through video - and this has put some serious pressure on Adobe to sort out nagging issues they have been trying to ignore for the past few years.

As you might notice, I am not worried, we are the guys that have been working with "flash lite" one of the many flash-related technologies that Adobe/Nokia have actively/accidentally botched up the past 4 years. In certain aspects things are better now (with Apple playing a very large role in this) - but it just taught us the lesson, if you are working at the bleeding edge (which everyone seems to be doing these days), things are going to be shaky/uncertain, ALWAYS - that is part of the fun of it all - the fact at the end of the day you can only trust your own gut and there are really very few that can tell you what and how you should be doing it.

For us Flash has never been about trying to reach iPhone consumers. For us it has always been an extremely open programming AND creative fast-prototyping tool, that both programmers and creatives could work on together. I don't see that changing anytime soon, even if developers are all C crazy, you still have to get creatives to surrender their tools (which is not easy if you think that some top designers STILL secretly use Freehand) - the point is, you just don't change programmer's and creative's workflow overnight - it might even just wreck it. As long as a tool allows you to develop/prototype your ideas quickly and get actual people to use it, that's enough for me (at this stage).

I think one of the biggest fears is, especially with those who used to be comfortable doing Flash for the web, is that all of a sudden have to think "backwards" in terms of processing power and size, it's scary when things are changing, but Adobe/Apple got us all into the mobile space somehow, and if not prepared for the turbulence, maybe better to paddle out to calmer niches?

I think our saving grace has been that we have always been aware how capricous technology and hardware providers are, and that their sheer size and corporate responsibilities can make them do really stupid things... to expect otherwise is just being out of touch with reality, and will make you feel very angry/depressed. We have been there, our best advice is to get over it and see how you can make the best of it - all your competitors have to do the same, there are very few silver bullets out there!