Flash is the only program to make Flash games with.
This is completely false. Just from Adobe, you've got a choice between Flash and Flex -- both of which compile to SWFs that run in the browser via the Flash player plugin.
In addition, you can use free software like FlashDevelop or haXe to create SWFs. The former relies on Adobe's free Flex SDK to compile AS3 code into SWFs while the latter uses its own language and independently targets the SWF format.
The Flex SDK is not a program, it is an open source SDK, as it is named.
The Flex SDK includes programs within it.
Quoting from Adobe's Flex 3 download page: "The Adobe® Flex⢠3 Software Development Kit (SDK) includes the Flex framework (component class library) and Flex compiler, enabling you to freely develop and deploy Flex applications using an IDE of your choice."
Flash games are games that are made in Flash. Games that are in the .swf format are not specifically Flash games.
The problem is that there are two meanings to the term Flash: There's Flash the development environment (currently Adobe Flash CS4), and there's Flash the runtime environment (currently Adobe Flash Player 10.0.22.87 for the popular browser plug-in; we'll ignore things like Projector and AIR to keep it simple).
Now when someone talks about a site with Flash games or such, they generally only care whether or not the game is a SWF that runs in Flash Player. They don't care if it was built with Flash, Flex, FlashDevelop, haXe, or SWFmill/MTASC. If it runs in Flash Player, the technical details are generally irrelevant.
In addition, SWF stands for "ShockWave Flash" so referring to all games in the "ShockWave Flash" format as "Flash games" makes sense.
