Have you ever found yourself deciding against a game you would otherwise check out because of what game engine it uses?
Yes, because of some shit the company pulled I’m no longer interested in games made in Unity.
It has a huge impact for me, most notably unreal engine because of how poorly most games made with it run, and it visually looking very soft or blurry in some games. So it’s something I check before looking at buying a game.
Yes, although it is not just about the engine. For AAA story games (think of something like Resident Evil) I couldn’t care less, but anything small scale with great modding potential gameplay-wise, I avoid engines that compile to bytecode like Unreal because they make it insanly painful to create mods. I prefer something that I can easily decompile to look at the souce code like Godot and Unity.
But as I said, that is not just an engine issue, since you can provide official mod support on Unreal or make it harder to mod on other engines using stuff like obfuscation or IL2CPP. But in general, especially on most small-scale Indie games, just looking at the used engine is enough to determine modability and therefore influence my decision.
I only buy games made with foss stuff like Godot, pyrite, babylon, haxe and sdl and these days.
I don’t need timmy getting more money for his bullshit, and after Unity went full on fuckwit with their idiotic ideas for runtime fees they have zero trust, even though they eventually canned Riccitello and rolled back that crazy, I simply don’t have faith in them to do the right thing when presented with moral quandaries.
I only have limited resources, so I’m not going to throw money at applications supporting bullshit. Oh, and no AI garbage is built into these options.
Definitely; I’ll never buy another Star Engine game as long as I live*
Not a deciding factor but it certainly tips the scale, usually in a positive light when it has relevancy.
Unity nowadays usually just works on Linux, despite usually feeling somewhat detached from any environments. Games made on RPG Maker, Scumm or to a lesser degree, Ren’Py, are super portable thanks to wrappers made for them. RPG Maker and Unity both also make it pretty obvious when a game was cheaply made. Unreal Engine’s graphics to me are anywhere between an ugly plastic/rubber appearance (but I could list some games I recommend in spite of that) to straight up and literally nauseating. Game Maker and Godot/Redot I’ve never had any major issues, so spotting them warrants a “nice, I guess” at most. And so on.
I don’t think that has ever been a purchasing factor for me.
Increasingly yes, Unity is spyware and UE5 games all play, look and feel the same.
No, I couldn’t care less what engine devs use. This is like choosing to not buy a cake because the baker used a Le Crueset spatula instead of a Tefal one. Literally doesn’t matter as long as the game (and cake) is good.
Yes, sort of. I absolutely hate the visual artifacts from TAA and from upscaling, which are both much more commonly used in UE5 games.
I’m also much more likely to try custom-engine games, just because I think people making their own engines is pretty cool ! I have only implemented very basic stuff myself, but it was very interesting to do !
No. You can make just about any engine do just about anything, especially if you’ve got low-level access to it. If this question is implying something about Unreal, just level set your expectations for the performance things that usually come along with that, but it’s not a foregone conclusion either.
I agree - An engine at the end of the day is just a tool.
This isn’t intended to be a bash a specific engine thing. I recently had a discussion with a friend who noted they very specifically avoided certain engines and I was wondering if that was a common sentiment or if he’s just odd.
Certain engines form certain reputations, but those people need to see enough counter examples to realize that the engine is just a contributing factor to what the resulting game is. Unity had “a look” for years, because so many devs used the default lighting, but then you realize that stuff like Cuphead, Hollow Knight, and Subnautica all run on Unity, and that reputation fades.
Another good example for Unity is Escape from Tarkov. Yes, EfT is a Unity game. It’s hard to believe.
One of my favorites is Batman: Arkham Knight. It uses Unreal Engine 3 and looks shockingly good despite it. Goes to show how much art direction matters.
If you played it at launch though, it did have a rough time scaling up to PC hardware that was better than consoles. It was pretty infamous for that back then.
Wasn’t that because of Denuvo?
Fortunately, no. I played after a few years.
If I see it’s Unreal 5, I fully expect it to look like shit and perform weird, so it has some weight on my decision.
Kinda, if it uses an open source game engine then it’s a plus.
what notable FOSS engines are there?
bobeff/open-source-engines: A list of open source game engines. https://github.com/bobeff/open-source-engines
Godot, plus there are plenty of frameworks (love2d, raylib)
The game engine should not be a factor in my opinion, but sometimes I have some feelings. In the end ultimately the game itself and how fun it is is the most important factor.
- Unreal Engine 5: This engine has such a poor reception for me, that whenever I see it I dislike the game before even having a chance to play. Its not fair I know, but its also not my fault that I think like that. Often games with this engine have stutter issues, require lot of resources and for whatever reason, most AAA games launching with this engine are in a bad state. In the end I will buy a game if its good, obviously, but the engine has a little deciding factor to look deeper or not… even if its just a little factor.
- Unity: I personally don’t like Unity anymore for the bullshit they did. But if I am honest, if the game is good then I do not care if its in Unity.
- Godot: I really want to like games made with this Open Source engine. But if I am honest again, I would not buy a bad game even if its made with this engine.
- RPG Maker: I am a fan of oldschool RPG Maker, so I don’t mind that. But whenever I see made with RPG Maker (or suspect it), the value of the game goes dramatically down for me.
- any custom engine: I highly respect good custom engines, made specifically for the game or company. They often feel and look different, so its actually a factor. Or at least it will make me curious and look deeper into the game.
You seem to dislike most game engines. Interesting
Honest question, what’s wrong with Godot? Haven’t play anything built on it yet. Will try Dog Walk sooner or later.
Nothing wrong with Godot. It’s just not the industry standard. Godot competes against Unity, but does not cost any money and its Open Source (so you know a company can’t do whatever they want). I’m not a game developer, so cannot go deeper than that I guess. :D
I’d argue it doesn’t influence the decision making process, but is a good indicator of your taste in video games
There some some very efficient games using UE5, like Satisfactory.
On the contrary, I’m afraid of custom engine games. Even if they ultimately turn out okay, the dev hell required to get them there often sinks the game. See: ME: Andromeda, Cyberpunk 2077. And Distant Worlds 2 (even though it wasn’t technically fully custom).
IMO the best path is choosing the game engine for your niche. As an example, Cryengine was practically made for KCD2’s European forests and medieval towns. Larian’s Divinity engine is literally made for a D&D-type game like BG3.
I’m surprised about the satisfactory reference, that game never ran particularly well for me once I was a ways in with lots of stuff built up.
YMMV, I guess? I think it runs incredibly well, especially with Lumen enabled, given the sheer amount of stuff in-game. FPS is way higher than comparable looking games without thousands of player built objects, and the lighting is beautiful.
Custom engines are my kryptonite when you end up with games like animal well and
balatroI stand corrected I must have misremembered
Wait, Balatro doesn’t have a “custom engine”. They use https://love2d.org/ . On itch.io you can even search games made with this engine: https://itch.io/games/made-with-love2d
I would say indirectly, if the game engine does not work on Linux then I’m not interested.
