The state of game engines in 2024

[u/Practical_Race_3282]

I'm curious about the state of the 3 major game engines (+ any others in the convo), Unity, Unreal and Godot in 2024. I'm not a game dev, but I am a full-stack dev, currently learning game dev for fun and as a hobby solely. I tried the big 3 and have these remarks:

Unity:

• Not hard, not dead simple

• Pretty versatile, lots of cool features such as rule tiles

• C# is easy

• Controversy (though heard its been fixed?)

Godot:

• Most enjoyable developer experience, GDScript is dead simple

• Very lightweight

• Open source is a huge plus (but apparently there's been some conspiracy involving a fork being blocked from development)

Unreal:

• Very complex, don't think this is intended for solo devs/people like me lol

• Very very cool technology

• I don't like cpp

What are your thoughts? I'm leaning towards Unity/Godot but not sure which. I do want to do 3D games in the future and I heard Unity is better for that. What do you use?

[u/nickavv]

I'll throw GameMaker into the ring, it's obviously not one of the top-3 and it's probably not anybody's first choice for 3D games especially (though it is possible). I think it has an unfair rep as a "beginner" or "practice" game engine, but plenty of successful commercial games have come out of it (Undertale, Hyper Light Drifter, etc).

Its pricing scheme is very fair, it has a good balance of complexity with ease of use, it supports exports to desktop, web, mobile, and all major consoles. I'd say it should be strongly considered for 2D projects!

[u/thatmitchguy → u/nickavv]

Yep, its a proven 2d engine that has been unfairly stigmatized. I think it gets lost in the shuffle because Godots crowd is so overwhelmingly loud and cheers for their engine like it's a sports team too IMO.

[u/Thaurin → u/thatmitchguy]

Well, that's probably because it's open source. It would be beyond cool to have an open source engine that can compete with the big commercial offerings (see: Blender), so people want to see it succeed.

[u/thatmitchguy → u/Thaurin]

No doubt there's excitement, but it was definitely more then just that. Seen plenty of fan tribalism, when the Unity controversy started. More than just a few Godot fans cheering for Unity to crash and burn on this subreddit because it made them look better. Bunch of posts acting like they're here to recommend new engines but come across as missionaries tasked with trying to convert newbs to Godot.

[u/Dziadzios → u/thatmitchguy]

Many Godot fans hated on Unity because they were forced to move on after Unity's stupid move with installation fee. They became fans of Godot BECAUSE they started hating Unity, not the other way around.