So often, you're greeted with the splash screen of Unreal Engine or "Made with Unity" when booting up a game, two of the most common game engines today. These are robust and mature engines, but they're not always the best options for independent developers, according to longtime developer Rez Graham. At a GDC 2024 talk titled "A Case for Making Your Own Game Engine," he advocated for building games on your own tech through frameworks and libraries—existing tools that offer some major advantages and, admittedly, some disadvantages developers should be aware of.
Graham has been making games independently under BleachKitty following his work at Electronic Arts on The Sims series. From his perspective and experience, the most popular game engines aren't always the best fit for development, and it really depends on your goals and the type of game you want to make. That makes sense on paper, but he outlined several factors that need to be considered when deciding whether to build your own tech or work with existing engines.
Read our full write-up of the talk at Game Developer.
I appreciate that there's an argument to be made here depending on the goals and scope of your game but also "C++ programmer with 20 years of professional experience says you should roll your own engine" is advice I'd caveat fairly heavily compared to if it was coming from someone in a less technical role
