How FarmVille and Facebook helped to cultivate a new audience for gaming | John Naughton

The Flash-based title, now put to rest alongside Adobe's animation tool, was much derided, but broadened the appeal of computer games

Two deaths you may have missed last week - for the simple reason that you have better things to do with your time than monitoring the tech industry. One was the end of FarmVille, a simplistic, time-wasting online game that consumed the attention of millions of Facebook users over the years; the other was the much-delayed execution of Flash, the animation tool that powered countless games and assorted website tricks for two decades, but which will no longer be supported by most web browsers or by its maker, Adobe.

As it happens, both deaths are related, because one application used the other, but both were ubiquitous for different reasons. The FarmVille story is about human nature and the dynamics of addiction, social media and surveillance capitalism, whereas Flash is really just about tech and the evolution of the web.