Casual Game Developer Arkadium Gets On The HTML5 Train

Casual games company Arkadium is announcing today that it’s supporting HTML5 games in its Arena Network. In other words, the company is finally acknowledging the need to move on from Flash.

The news seems inevitable — and, if anything, a bit late. Back in 2011, Adobe, the company behind Flash, seemed to accept the fact that the technology wasn’t going to make the transition to smartphones and tablets, and it killed Flash for mobile.

Arkadium co-founder Kenny Rosenblatt said that while his company “dipped its toe in the water” by porting some of its games to the more mobile-friendly HTML5 format two years ago, mobile traffic wasn’t significant enough to justify a full-scale shift. However, he said Arkadium was tracking traffic trends “very closely,” and what was once 5 percent of traffic “quickly became unignorable” when it got up to 10 or 20 percent.

For his part, Rosenblatt still doesn’t sound entirely happy about the switch. He praised Flash as “a really strong platform” for games, one that HTML5 doesn’t yet match.

“I was hoping that Adobe would stand up for this technology,” he said.

Arkadium is 13 years old, but it recently raised its first venture funding. Its Arena Network is a platform that brings casual gaming to other digital properties, including the AARP’s website and CNN. Arkadium is also announcing the Chicago Tribune as a new partner using the HTML5 platform.