The Future of Games is an Instant Flash to the past
The future of games is instant ⏱️ A new generation of instant games is melding the accessibility of Flash games with the performance of native apps. These games are poised to reshape the market for both players & creators 🎨 But wait, what are instant games? Thread 👇 pic.twitter.com/kmxkvBmSwD
That's from Jon Lai, a partner at a16z, also known as Andreesen Horowitz, a major Venture Capital firm that invests in tech. This isn't the first investor I've seen who thinks "instant games" are the Next Big Thing, so I dug into the thread to see what piqued his interest. And sure enough, among his reasons was the sudden success of a little game called Friday Night Funkin, or "FNF" as the kids call it (not to be confused with "FNAF").
None of this makes sense under the traditional models of the game industry. Nobody pays money to buy this game or unlock content for it. Further, there's no (official) version on the mobile App Stores, Steam, or home consoles. It's not remote streaming through Stadia or Luna, it's not hooked into VR, and it's not part of anything trying to be "the metaverse," the other supposed Next Big Thing. Most perplexingly to the traditional mindset, the game is not just free but open source, so nothing stops people from cloning it and making weird remixes and mods (which is exactly what they do).
