Maybe just nostalgia talking, but the height of Newgrounds really seemed like a golden age for light gaming. The shift to mobile games has just resulted in a large number of gambling simulators, which I'm sure has been a key reason for the popularity of Kalshi, Polymarket, etc.

I would argue the height of light gaming was the height of Congregate, which was a little past newgrounds' own.

The games were more polished by the time, but still quite wild.

I'd say the shift to mobile went through a similar arc into decline as the web, actually.

Newgrounds really was the golden age for web gaming. And, similar to early web, early mobile gaming also started out with nostalgia-worthy charm and heart. You're right that it's been hollowed out, but the same thing happened to web gaming after the Flash era. The social casino era is maybe its 6th reinvention, and its lowest yet.

Now that mobile gaming has been raced to the bottom and consolidated (and thanks to the dual tailwinds of AI making it easy to write code without engines and the web maturing in its 3d+networking capabilities) we're started to see a resurgence of web-based games - it's my full-time job now! Granted we still do rely on mobile apps (as web wrappers) for monetization, but that wall is crumbling rapidly.

that's quite a reach. much more notably, the shift to mobile games has resulted in predatory pay2win "micro"transactions and ads everywhere. the last time I'd tried to find something new to play on the shitter, seemingly every random game I'd got from the playstore wanted an AAA's $ to unlock features and/or was full of ads. and they weren't even those coomer bait gachas everyone with half a brain knows to avoid.

The crazy thing is there was a period between Newgrounds games and mobile games: Facebook games. It was so popular at that moment and so insignificant hindsight that we barely remember it.

That seems a reach to say the popularity of kalshi and polymarket is down to gambling simulators.

Id wager (heh) that it's much more down to a lack of regulation combined with the normalisation of influencer driven get rich quick but pretend it's clever investing that exploded in popularity with crypto and wallstreetbets style influencer investing. Combine that with house prices being where they are and people get risky with investing as their hope outstrips their caution.

I don't think a few rounds of balatro or slotomania leads to that.

Gambling aside, the median quality of a modern mobile game is worse than what we had on newgrounds.

NG didn't have multiple 500MB downloads, buttons in the wrong place, pointless currencies. More importantly NG artists actually cared. I understand why Apple killed Flash, but what we got in its place is not better.