Maybe just nostalgia talking, but the height of Newgrounds really seemed like a golden age for light gaming. The shift to mobile games has just resulted in a large number of gambling simulators, which I'm sure has been a key reason for the popularity of Kalshi, Polymarket, etc.
Gambling aside, the median quality of a modern mobile game is worse than what we had on newgrounds.
NG didn't have multiple 500MB downloads, buttons in the wrong place, pointless currencies. More importantly NG artists actually cared. I understand why Apple killed Flash, but what we got in its place is not better.
Software in general is worse than it used to be 20 years ago. My conjecture is that as the software industry got bigger and bigger, the number of people who cared about doing good work stayed the same, which meant a higher percentage of work has been done by people who don't care. But regardless of the cause, quality in our industry is way down.
hodgehog11 · · focus · HN ↗
avaer · · focus · HN ↗
NG didn't have multiple 500MB downloads, buttons in the wrong place, pointless currencies. More importantly NG artists actually cared. I understand why Apple killed Flash, but what we got in its place is not better.
bigstrat2003 · · focus · HN ↗