I wrote a few bullet points after listening to the episode, and I've expanded them from memory. I'm sorry if I'm attributing anything to you that wasn't actually said. I'd like to offer a different perspective to some of the issues raised:
- Lack of preservation
You mention the lack of preservation compared to PC and console games. I agree, however I don't think it's mainly due to lack of interest, as there's a bigger hurdle, and a reason for the bias towards other games: Most flash games are transmitted online, and played from inside the browser, and weren't saved as files on the computer. There aren't as many copies of the games because there was no need to. You just visited the website.
Also, some games involved a dedicated website backed by a server. Those are even harder to preserve unless the source code is provided.
- Reasons to get rid of Flash (as it exists)
Yes, web standards bodies are trying to kill Flash. You didn't really cover their stated reasons, and I think it came across as companies trying to dictate how the web should work and how websites should look. (which I cover in point 3) The main reasons for wanting to kill flash are
-
lots of security holes, which makes it very easy for attackers to gain control of a user's machine and/or steal sensitive data.
-
It's proprietary. Which means that it's hard to fix bugs and security problems (because you depend on a single company that produces it), and it doesn't work everywhere. You can have a web browser on new device X, and it won't have Flash because Adobe think it's not important, or the device manufacturer didn't cooperate with Adobe on whatever. Web browsers aim mostly for an open, standard web, where you can write something once and expect that it will work in most browsers.
-
Technically it's not very good. It's slow even for simple games like Binding of Isaac, which lag, and support on some platforms (such as Linux) is worse.
There's a good summary of some of these issues on Wikipedia.
- Web standards
Web standards are NOT trying to dictate how web sites should look. They don't prevent anyone from making a weird website that doesn't behave like expected. For example, with CSS you can rotate a website 34 degrees and no-one's stopping you. Most of the things that are doable with Flash are doable using "web standards". Multimedia, specifically audio, is still buggy, but it's improving slowly (so I understand. I don't actually use it)
Don't forget that browsers can already play DOS and Windows games with Javascript (by using the same code as the original software, without any modification). It's powerful.
The technology of Flash itself can already "Survive" by keeping the old operating systems around, and running it in old software. To really be preserved, Adobe should open source the plugin itself, and if enough games are still around, people might pick it up and make it work well. There are already a few open source implementation of Flash, even a Javascript one that runs in a browser without installing any plugin. One of those (Shumway) is even written by Mozilla, which is one of the largest groups deciding on web standards. (They want Flash content/games to still work. This stresses the point that their issue is with the Flash plugin.)
Here's Canabalt (original swf file) running on Shumway (kind of. I couldn't get it to accept any input): http://www.areweflashyet.com/adamatomic/canabalt2.html
Shumway is sort of under active development. The last commit is from March, but I don't think they've given up yet :)