[free]

Hi there, "Jon N/A". Glad to see you here.

If you want to learn some HTML, CSS and PHP I can recommend the basic tutorials on W3Schools. PHP's official homepage is also excellent if you want to search for a specific function. Complete with descriptions and code examples.

Be sure to check the Java API whenever wanting to know about Java functionality (though I don't know of any good beginner's tutorials).

[personal opinion]When it comes to Flash, I actually find Adobe Flash to be quite horrible (for making games, it's ok for animation and smaller stuff). I've lately been checking out Flixel and FlashPunk in a FlashDevelop environment and I very much prefer it. Bonus: Contrary to Adobe Flash, it's all free.[/personal opinion]

True. Many of the developers I've spoken with "haven't got the time" to play games.

The most common problem that breaks my immersion in games is that I'm not involved. I'm a spectator, a viewer, but I do not have any control. The game guides me and when I press a wrong button I am punished. Ultimately, I have no control.

Although this example is perhaps not the best (and more something out of an action movie) but assume the following scenario:
- The player's daughter has been kidnapped and her life is at danger. The evil, evil villain is going to kill her unless the player saves her quick enough.

In a game:
I would fail. And the villain kills her. Game Over. The game restarts. Nothing changes and nothing matters. I just have to press the correct button sequences to make the scenario unfold. I have no control whatsoever.

In reality:
I would perhaps fail. My daugther is killed. Life moves on.

In my opinion games would be much more interesting if what I did, my faults and errors, actually meant something. I do not deem failure in itself as such a huge problem in games. The problem is that failure means nothing. It is not an outcome, it is a punishment.

It would be more interesting if the daughter was killed, and I had to move on and try to overcome this staggering loss. But the designer doesn't want that to happen, so I get a Game Over screen.

What would be even more interesting would be if this would be applied to more interesting scenarios than these blunt action sequences that games seem to be all about.

[prefer]

A reason why games tend to be longer would perhaps be that they're also a lot more expensive. An average game may be sold for about 5x the price of a movie or a music album.

By this, gamers expect to find a lot of content for their money. People, in general, don't pay as much for a 9 minute EP as for a full-length album.

The problem is that gamers seem to prefer to pay $50 for a long game rather than $10 for a shorter one. Doesn't that pose a much higher risk if the game turns out to be bad?

This focus on quantity over quality is of course saddening.

Reminds me of Execution by 2Dcube. Although being incredibly unpolished and dealing with the matter way too briefly to be very interesting at all, it's still different from most death in the media.

(Quite ironic considering 2dcube's most poplar games, the Karoshi series, in which the goal is to kill yourself a million times over.)