I have some game developing experience. In the past I developed a text based trader/gladiator trainer game for the Ti86 which was never distributed. I also have some object oriented php experience but I don’t really like the idea of building a text based php game (even with ajax) simply because I don’t like the idea of running the game from a server side engine. I have thought of going the javascript route which is somewhat appealing but after playing with the open source Flex Builder 3 there is no question which direction I want to go.

From my limited exposure I really think Flex is the way to go if you want to build a mostly text based game with the possibility of including an occasional animated cut scene. Flex doesn’t seem to offer much in terms of animation but I love how you create libraries, edit in an xml based language and just work with actionscript 3 in general. It also offers a brilliant CSS interface for styling your app/game.

The one drawback is your apps aren’t very search engine friendly. So I would not recommend building an entire website in Flex. If you are going to use Flex in a more traditional web app I would suggest using it as a means to more efficiently collect UGC (user generated content). Then use php/html with xml or mysql on the back end to organize and display data. If you do display content embedded in a swf file I suggest also offering an html version without cloaking.

Anyway, I’m sure most of you aren’t really interested in my opinion on web apps and search engines. I really just wanted to say I’m getting into AS3 and hope to launch a game sometime in the future. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions on this topic I would love to get some feedback.

I’m also interested in potentially sponsoring existing flash games. I can’t offer the resources, money or exposure as some of the large sponsors. What I can offer is a decent amount of high quality exposure to help an up and coming developer get started.