I will admit that when I first became a Rich Internet Application (RIA) developer, I initially threw my hat in with Microsoft’s Silverlight.  It was hugely advantageous to my career to be a publicized early adopter of the technology.  However, as a gaming platform, Silverlight does not have nearly as many tools, momentum, community and install base as Flash.  And, with the downturn in the economy, there isn’t very much traction in creating Silverlight portals for free games supported by ad revenue.  Also, good luck finding sponsors.

Flash does not to seem to be faring better in the current economy.  Sponsorships and eCPMs are down.  And as if the consternation of lowered wages for indie Flash developers couldn’t be worse, Greg Mclanahan, the Community and Developer Relations Manager from Kongregate, stepped on the proverbial landmine by saying to Flash game developers “don’t expect to be paid by the hour” and “no one asked you to make these games anyway.” As if the economy hasn’t already knocked down the spirits of many Flash entrepreneurs, this was like getting kicked in the groin from who was thought to be a partner in the Flash gaming revolution.

With all these issues, there are some who would dare to tell Flash developers to charge money for their games and to no longer accept the status quo of begging for sponsorships and getting fractions of a penny for every ad that is seen on your game.  This may seem insane, especially in this economy, but here are 5 reasons why this is not only a viable business strategy, but also because there are serious market eruptions that will happen in the next several months that will put indie Flash game developers on the forefront of a new age of gaming.

1) Flash on Smartphones

While everyone is running towards the iPhone gold rush, and having to learn how to program on a proprietary API, Adobe is busting open the door for Flash developers to have their games on the next generation of Smartphones.  You won’t have to learn a completely new language or buy proprietary hardware or software to get your games onto these cellphones, Adobe is doing most of the grunt work for you.  And while everyone and their uncle is gunning to make a buck on the iPhone with Apple taking a cut off profits from your games, the larger Smartphone audience will be clamoring for the same love and attention from entrepreneurial game makers.  And it doesn’t hurt that Flash will come with built-in multi-touch support.

2) Flash and GPUs

One of the major setbacks of Flash has always been performance.  Actionscript 3.0 has significantly increased the speed and potential for many Flash games, including the ability to show true 3D objects.  But software acceleration isn’t good enough for us and Adobe has been working hard with Nvidia to allow Flash to finally access hardware for greater acceleration of 3D effects in the Flash player.  This is incredible potential for indie Flash developers who want to utilize even more effects, animations and game play elements that were previously out of reach for lack of processor power.  The last performance hurdle for Flash is about to be cleared.

3) Facebook and MySpace

Both these social networking conglomerates have been opening their doors and reaching out for more games that use their APIs.  There is huge potential for the savvy developer to create the next set of game portals on highly viral networks, all in the same web application.  Right now there is an abundance of AJAX-based games on Facebook, but Flash is largely untapped.  This is a goldmine ready to be struck.

4) Adobe AIR

This has been a largely untapped gaming medium that indie Flash developers have been neglecting.  Having a game installed directly on the computer and running on the OS taskbar in fullscreen is a significant step towards full realization of a viable gaming medium for the PC.  I’m not sure why not enough indie game developers have sought to use Adobe AIR to install a game directly on the users computer.  Perhaps in the next several months, when Flash developers start charging money for people to play their games, the idea of having an application installed on the target machine may become more desirable than hanging out on portal webpages with advertisements before the menu screen.  And it seems that Adobe has more tricks up its sleeve for Adobe AIR, so watch for this technology to grow into a more viable gaming platform.

5) Google Chrome OS

This is probably the most significant game changer that has occurred.  I don’t think it has been largely discussed, but the Google OS is a boon to all Flash Game developers.  The Google OS is simply a Linux shell that runs an enhanced Chrome browser.  The Google website already has almost every major application that one would need on their website – from having Word, Powerpoint or Excel in Google Docs, to uploading and sharing pictures and video, to email.

If the majority of functionality, calculations and storage are done on the server-level, this frees up the Netbook to be even less expensive and portable than ever before.  And in this downturn economy, buying a cheap computer that has all this functionality will take off.  Also, consider that in terms of price, simplicity and universality of the Netbook, this will open up a new demographic to computers than ever before.  The Netbook, combined with Google OS, is primed to be the “Wii” of PC-gaming.

Did I mention games?  That is the one thing that the new Google OS would need is games – specifically browser-based games.  It is almost a given that the new Chrome OS would be able to run Flash 10 on Linux.  This completely new demographic of gamers would need games for their Netbooks.  And not just games you can play from a portal, but fully immersive experiences that take up the whole screen.  The very experience that is missing from portal-centric Flash games that are currently out there.

What the Google OS does is creates the very platform that Flash games need – an operating system where all its functionality runs on the server through a browser.  This makes Flash the perfect platform for gaming experiences on its new OS.

And did I mention that Adobe AIR works on Linux?