[Cthulhu_]

There's a few causes I'd posit. We've gone through a number of tools now, and they all seem finite. We don't have time to just noodle around anymore. We have loads of other things to play with as well. And of course, life, obligations, etc; time is a rare commodity and you want to spend it on something you know you'll enjoy.

That said, last time I spent some time on just playing with software was with the Pico-8 virtual console and its intentionally constrained development tooling.

[tombert]

I will admit that Pico 8 is probably the most fun dev environment I've found since Flash. It doesn't give me the same "anything is possible" feeling Flash did, but that might just be because I'm more jaded and not a child anymore (as my quickly receding hairline keeps reminding me of!).

I do think that Flash was more fun for me just because it was "animation-first", instead of "programming first". It felt like I could easily make "real" cartoons, and then make a game out of it, instead of trying to bolt on a bunch of PNGs into a gaming framework. I know it wasn't for everyone, but for a kid like me, it was kind of magic.