When you build a platform, you want to build it as fast and as big as possible.

GREE is already scoring high in terms of the volume of releases on its mobile social gaming network, but in order to accelerate the flow, it's released its Lightweight SWF tool - which it labels LWF.

No Flash in the pan

Lowering the barriers to entry for developers, it enables you to convert Flash content into games that use either HTML5 or Unity.

The latter supports iOS and Android native apps, but presumably will require a separate licence.

GREE says LWF uses an animation engine based on a unique file format to render animation data from the Flash content.

Of course, this is only applicable for certain types of 2D games, but GREE's argues that the flexibility of the system is its advantage. Indeed, it's already used LWF internally to create social casual games Animal Days and Alien Family.

And in order to ensure as many developers as possible can check out the tool, GREE has released LWF as an open source project on Github using the zlib licence.

You can get the code here.