I don’t think anyone will argue the fact that the only other platform I would’ve been able to rapidly develop and deploy games like Nick vs Bus and Word Wars wo

I don’t think anyone will argue the fact that the only other platform I would’ve been able to rapidly develop and deploy games like Nick vs Bus and Word Wars would be Flash. I would argue it. The speed with which you can develop simple games has much more to do with how well you understand the platform itself (its tools, libraries, capabilities) than what the platform is. I'm not saying platforms and languages don't intrinsically affect your pace. They do. But it also depends a lot on what you're doing. One language lets you write a web server in an hour; another allows fast and robust mathematical analysis. Writing a fun game in 24 hours is such a pliable goal that you could clear it with, say, a graphing calculator, an industrial robot, or a Word macro. To say nothing of languages people actually write games in!