Why are there no flash games on Giant Bomb

Giant Bomb includes games from ancient systems and phone games yet does not seem to include any flash games. Why is this?

Are there any flash games of importance? Things like N+ or Castle Crashers may have started as flash but made their way into other systems. The only phone games on the site are ones of note. The iOS app store gets over 150 new games a day and almost none of those are on the site. The site also doesn't have any pre smart phone cell phone games like those flip phone versions of Call of Duty 2 and Need for Speed Underground. If there are any flash games that warrant it I'd suspect they'd be listed as PC or Mac.

Because no one's made a page for them yet.

There has to be some bar for creation, and with console and PC releases it's pretty easy to keep of track of where that bar is. If you allow the posting of some flash games on the wiki then you run the risk of people just creating pages for every flash game out there, of which the numbers are near infinite.

I remember this question being asked on the Bombcast a few years ago (I think) and Jeff's response was "Because we have to fucking draw the line somewhere".

The Binding of Isaac

The problem with allowing flash games is that there is a lot of flash games, ( which is good ), there is very little bar to make a flash game ( which is good ), but the information on spific games, is very little.

There is a web platform, for releases I believe. or at least there was.

there are a lot of flash games, like a lot and anyone can make them. That would be the biggest headache to manage. And the fact that they are on a site like newgrounds should be enough. I mean does a generic tetris flash game deserve a page? would anyone care what else that user made (which would be under his profile on what ever site he is uploading too)?

I think old Jeff quoted by @gkhan is pretty spot on

A lot of the browser games are Flash. Westerado had a Quick Look. There's not every Flash game, because that's just impossible, but there's not none.

Exactly. Flash is OK. Every single browser based game? Not so much.

Everyone is tiptoeing around it so I'm going to say it.

99% of flash games are shit.

is a fucking awesome game ^_^

Anyway, browser games are acceptable (BTW, not all Flash games are browser game/vice-versa); the staff/mods have stated that you're free to add browser gamers - provided they have been written about in some editorial capacity, have some kind of monetisation, and/or are developed by an otherwise known developer (for example, The Border Lands).

I think they cover every flash game of importance. So yeah not many flash games on the site

What about all the 90s-ass Tiger Electronics handhelds? What about ROMhacks? What about video poker? Follow the money, guys!

Ahh, I missed that category. Thanks

And to everyone saying they are all crap. Yes there is a lot of rubbish, but there are quite a few gems, such as Cursed Treasure, the Epic Battle fantasy series, The company of myself, Rebuild and Diamond hollow 2.

They are mostly retro games, but good ones.

@buckyball735: There are Flash games on the site. We allow games to be listed with "browser" as their platform and most of the games that are, are Flash games, but any browser-based game added to the wiki must be of at least some notability. Many of the browser-based games you'll see in the wiki are attached to larger non-browser games, have been released across multiple platforms, have been discussed by the staff, or are in some other way prominent. As Jeff said we have to draw the line somewhere, and while there are certainly Flash games that we should give recognition if we're trying to build a fully-formed game wiki, we see little worth in cataloguing every single Flash game that comes out.

Just putting every newgrounds game in the wiki would be insane.

I think the criteria that was handed to me before (which is flexible, though) is that it has to have some sort of notoriety, like having a release on other systems, or being developed by companies/people with credits on Giant Bomb for non-browser games. Also acceptable are ones that become newsworthy, I believe, like ones with articles at multiple different sites/magazines.

This feels VERY familiar.

@buckyball735: Flash games fall under the Browser platform in the database. There are guidelines/rules for what qualifies for a page though, so make sure you understand them before creating any new pages.

Other websites carry the flash games better & with so many of them, we don't need that clogging up the wiki with 9999 versions of knock off bejeweled.

@buckyball735: Just churning the thread for semantics at this point, but when people say "flash game" they deliberately give it a connotation of low quality. People who dismiss PHP as a way to create website apps are making the same point. Like what "Made in Taiwan" meant decades ago, but now that's where all our hard drives come from. :)

They don't normally mean a game literally "made with the Flash development platform", which in fact includes many games in the GB wiki on various hardware platforms, packaged as tidy little executables, like AIR. Flash, or more specifically ActionScript, doesn't exist as its own game engine, but it can create one. Just like you shouldn't be so vague to say a "C/C++ game", but you can say Unity game, which could potentially be assigned to the Browser platform. Do I really want to start saying "oh that's a Flixel game"? No, not really. But if it graduates to a full engine, it would be accurate.

I just wanted to thank you guys for not embedding 'this far and no further'. You give me hope.

Intrusion 2 is a Flash game. :D

It's sold on Steam though.

Regardless, it's awesome.

They do exist on the site, listed under both PC and Browser depending on their distribution method. I created a page for the original Flash version of Alien Hominid as soon as it was allowed.