[krapp]

Building your own engine is fine advice for someone with experience throughout the whole stack, but for most people who just "want to make a game" it's just going to get them stuck in the weeds of intractable problems once they get past the "fun parts" and things get complicated and out of their depth.

[actionfromafar]

Of course depends on ones mindset and scope for the game. If you made one or two very simple games "back in the day" and just want to repeat the experience, using libraries can be a smaller hurdle than to grok a game engine.

But if you want 3D objects or game networking etc etc, a game engine will probably be the right thing.