Flash games have been around for a long time, essentially ever since the program 's introduction by Macromedia back in 1996. Currently, newer versions of Flash are made under Adobe, which purchased Macromedia in December of 2005. When Flash first came out, it was quite difficult to design games, as the application had not had time to be perfected and still had many bugs and flaws. Consequently, programming was expensive for companies and individuals alike willing to incur in the sponsorship of a flash game.

In fact, one had to be almost a computer genius just to figure the program out, let alone design a game with it. Over the years, as Flash evolved and was updated, it became progressively easier to manipulate and learn. Nowadays, even a novice can teach himself to develop Flash games in as little as a week, although it takes longer to design advanced games. Today, it’s not only easier and faster to develop, but flash games have evolved to ever more complicated plots, with scenarios and special effects designed to entice the user to longer periods of playing time.

Flash has its own unique coding language that programmers use to add interactivity to their creations. The language is known as Actionscript, which along with Flash, was developed by Macromedia. It closely resembles the web language Javascript and is based on ECMAScript. Those who are familiar with Javascript and other dialects of ECMAScript can easily pick up Actionscript. For one to create a game in Flash, it is required that they know Actionscript, as it is impossible to develop any interactive application without utilizing it. Like other programming languages, there are a wide variety of resources and books on the subject, so anybody who is interested in learning it has the freedom to do so.

There are numerous benefits of Flash games over traditional computer software games. First and foremost, they are free, and you will rarely ever find a website that charges you to play Flash games; if paid websites do exist, they probably do not get any business, as it is incredibly easy to find a site that hosts Flash games that anyone can access. Flash applications are inherently unique, and each one has a different and inimitable feel.

Due to this fact, one will never get bored, and being that the games are free, you can play as many games as you want for as long as you want and never have to pay a penny, unlike computer games which can cost fifty dollars and which one tires of relatively quickly. Every day, new Flash creations are added to the Internet. There are even some websites that exist solely for the purpose of receiving Flash submissions, and many of these sites allow users to vote on which games they like best.

Beyond simple entertainment, there are many market applications for Flash games. Businesses can add games to their websites as a means to attract potential customers, retain them, and offer added value besides just their products. Depending on the quality of a game, it can turn out to be viral, and spread around the Internet at a rapid pace. If you can manage to host an exclusive, viral Flash game on your website, the amounts of traffic you receive will be astounding.

It used to cost many thousands of dollars to develop an entertaining flash game application. However, there has been such a big success and growing demand for this type of labor, the fees for development have dropped somewhat. You could easily find a coder at a developer forum that will put together a flash game in your behalf for a few hundred dollars, but for a game that will propagate in the web and keep players coming back, prepare to enter the thousands.