That Google and Adobe tag-team? It's about gaming on Chrome OS

I'll admit, the title is a bit of an over-simplification. There are plenty of other reasons Google and Adobe have been working so closely together lately. They're both members of the Open Screen Project and should, therefore, be cooperating. But there's no question that Flash gaming in the Chrome browser and Chrome OS is very important right now.

When Google demoed the Chrome Web Store at I/O, two games were front and center - Lego Star Wars and Plants vs. Zombies. Those of us on the outside can't get in and play with them yet, so I went and did some digging and found one developer who did have a Chrome app package available for download.

Owen Campbell-Moore wrapped up Spark Chess into Chrome .crx file -- so I downloaded it, installed it, and then promptly took it apart to see how tricky it was to accomplish. It turns out packing Spark Chess was a pretty simple process, so I decided to put together a couple icons and a manifest for Infectonator.

It took all of 5 minutes and I had my Chromium browser running two Chrome Apps. If I was able to package a game this quickly, it's going to be a cakewalk for casual game developers to do. And with Pushbutton Engine now open for business, Flash Gaming development is going to keep steaming ahead for quite some time.

But wait a second, these are .crx? Don't those start chewing up memory as soon as you install them? Nope. Apps don't behave the same way extensions do. They don't use any resources until you launch them, just like the apps on your current OS. Now back to the Flash discussion...

There's no denying Flash's dominance in web-based gaming. Nearly all of the incredibly fun, addictive Time Wasters we've covered over the years have been built using Flash. Infectonator? Yep, that's Flash. Sonny and Sonny 2? Flash. FarmVille? Flash. You get the idea.

So if you're trying to get a new OS to market that's going to run on tablets and needs to compete with the iPad and its games, what do you need to level the playing field? A gaming platform that's massive, familiar, and easy to integrate. There are 80 MILLION FarmVille players, and you can't tell me they would rather own a tablet that displays a blue Lego brick than their beloved virtual farm.

Yes, Google is busy building GPU acceleration, WebGL, pepper, NaCL, etc. into Chrome and one day in the future we'll be playing games like Quake using those technologies. But Google has their sights set on shipping Chrome OS on tablets this year -- and right now, Flash is king of the casual gaming scene.

If the internal Flash plugin and Google's closer relationship with Adobe can mitigate some concerns -- battery life, for example -- Flash gaming will be a very compelling reason for a lot of users to buy a Chrome OS device.

Tags: adobe, chrome, chrome os, ChromeOs, chromium, crx, flash, games, google