Link for reference: http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1412560 and http://www.newgrounds.io
Before I ever used any other websites, aside from PBSKids and Neopets, I was on Newgrounds. A lot. I made an account pretty late in the game because I could never figure out how to make it all go (the page used to be jank), but once I did ohhhh the wonders I had found.
Newgrounds back in the day was basically my steam. Anywhere I could go, there was my games that I played right on the net. Whats really great about that is that the more games on the site that I find nowadays are like meatboy and shovelnight and are easily 2-4 hours long. They could be on steam, but nah thats a pain in the ass. Its easier on newgrounds to just have your game and put it out there and wow lookit that. Newgrounds was always the place you could go to do whatever, whenever, wherever. Everything by Everyone. You into flash animations? Do it. You make games? Do it. Art? Music? Do it. There was going to be a software portal but that was canceled not long after concept for obvious reasons.
But theres a problem. 95% of stuff on NG is flash based. Now, I dunno about you, but I wanna play toss the turtle and thing thing still, and with flash dying in 2020 I was part relieved and part pissed because that literally kills about 65% of my favorite games I have ever played as well as a bunch of hilarious animations that aren’t on youtube. So, NG made Negrounds.io.
The essential point of it is to take a flash project and run it through an engine that has no actionscript and sort of run it in a container like space as I understand it so that the whole of newgrounds is basically saved. A lot of content on NG is flash based. A LOT. Probably around 90%. Though, a lot of people have been converting their stuff to HTML5 or sourced it out to the forum to convert to a video or an HTML app. A lot of changes have been made to accept content on the site as well. For example, they take MP4 files now, and have for around 3 years. The saw the writing on the wall for flash years ago and jumped on that as fast as possible.
Special stage bonus: NGIO is open. If a site has flash stuff that they are super dependant on NGIO is available to them for use. At the moment its in beta but free. Theres certain things that need to pass by the devs, but you wanna try? Give it a shot. I don’t know if you’ll have to pay for a license eventually? But if I know newgrounds you probably won’t. Which would be a shame since they could make a lot of money with that tool. Near as I can tell they already have a few test apps running on it like Pico’s School and some others. Daddy n Me and maybe hellbenders. But it isn’t finished yet.
I don’t think many people really think NG is that much of an active community anymore, but its way more bumpin than Tek was at its peak which is saying a lot. I know that I’m back in on the site for sure (if comcast wasn’t fucking me over I’d be playing NG games right now). Maybe @wendell will be interested in this too. I don’t know that many will see this as an important development, but it is for NG, and I’m sure there are other sites that this will matter a lot for as well.