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by pipeline_peak 910 days ago
Unless it’s as advanced as Unity, is it possible to even sell an engine these days?

Something like this is expected to be free

3 comments

It's an extremely bad idea to go and build from scratch a do-everything game engine with AAA 3D capabilities, but there is absolutely space for engines with a very specific focus.

If you want to make a VN, would you rather open up a blank project in Unity or just use Ren'Py?

In the commercial space, RPG Maker and GameMaker continue to exist.

With Unity, the trust is gone. I don't think there's ever been a good time to be in the game engine business but this is probably the best time.
This is an unfair comparison imo. Just because Dewalt (or similar) sell a comprehensive toolbox does not mean people won't pay for a standalone screwdriver. It all depends on what people feel they need.
I looked at, at least 8 different moddio games. They're all top down Newgrounds games with painfully obvious similarities. The only exception was one where you control a fish. In that one the water splash animation occurred on the grass leaving me to believe the game was pushing the envelope of what the engine could do.

One trick pony engines worked in the 90's because something like an FPS required rare personnel to develop given the limited hardware. That's why you'd get weird kids stuff like Nerf Arena Blast (Unreal 1) and Super 3D Noah's Ark (Wolfenstein 3D engine). Eventually you had Renderware, but that was like the Unity of the 2000s.

There's a world of JS game engines, more advanced, for free today https://github.com/collections/javascript-game-engines

Moddio has built in multiplayer server support that seems pretty intuitive, that's definitely something special. But a screwdriver that makes Stick RPG clones isn't very profitiable.

fwiw they're called "IO games" and they're - even still - not-unpopular games