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Back in middle school I would play games like bowman, kitten cannon, sniper assassin, etc. On sites like addictinggames.com, or crazymonkeygames.com.

I know these games would have ads run on them, which I assume was profitable for the developer. Especially titles like those that probably have 8 figure play-stats across the internet.

I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this market, and could provide some insight as to how it is doing now, and what is used to make these games: Is it financially worth developing a browser game? Do I have to use flash to be accepted on these sites?

Back then they were all flash games, but there has been a large uprising of javascript game engines since then (which I am much more familiar with.) But I'm not sure if that's something these sites would accept.

Gage Hendy Ya Boy
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    This video might be interesting to you: The Flash Games Postmortem on GDC 2017. It tells you a lot about the flash game development community. They really were a bunch of starving artists. – Philipp Jul 02 '18 at 09:07
  • This question looks like it's really asking "should I use Flash," which is a "which technology should I use" question we can't answer for you. But your closing comment "I'm not sure if that's something these sites would accept" is something you can answer more concretely: check the sites' submission policies or contact the people who run them and ask "can I publish a game on your site developed with [X]?" - that will give you much more actionable answers straight from the source. – DMGregory Jul 08 '18 at 15:49

2 Answers2

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Do I have to use flash to be accepted on these sites?

Flash is dead. The browser vendors killed it and put HTML5+JavaScript in its place. Even Adobe admits that. All the web game portals are moving to HTML5+Javascript games.

I know these games would have ads run on them, which I assume was profitable for the developer.

Advertisement is one way to monetize smaller games. But the real money is in microtransactions now. Not every game is suitable for microtransations, though. It needs to have enough long term motivation to keep the player engaged for multiple sessions and enough content to warrant paying for.

Philipp
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Here's revenue information for browser-games developer and publisher Plarium:

https://www.owler.com/company/plarium

So yes, I would say it's very very profitable.

PaulD
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