Inside Social Games

For over a year now, Sharendipity has spent its time building a tools platform for user-created games. However, recently, the company announced that they will be abandoning Java for Flash. Why?

According to Sharendipity’s blog, the reasoning lands simply on market penetration: “The reason we are moving to Flash is because of Java’s adoption rates… We suspect that we lose somewhere between thirty and fifty percent of users due simply to the fact that we are in Java.” Flash has approximately 95% penetration amongst internet users.

Java used to be one of the best platforms for developing web-based games, but over time, Flash and ActionScript have caught up and become much more prevalent. Nevertheless, there are those that hope that Java’s Update 10 will be the salvation they desire. They say Java is significantly better at rendering the 2D graphics that make up the majority of web games and is, in fact, far more advanced and more powerful than ActionScript. The debate is certainly interesting to read, and you find a lot of insight on different points of view. If interested, you can find another good one, here.

All in all, there are a number of people that love Java that are upset to see more and more companies shift to using Flash. It really is a better built language with a great deal of power, but Sharendipity is making the right choice in going with the wider audience Flash will bring it.