Mark Brown: Top games are made on GameMaker

In early July, the GMTK Game Jam was held, where 5,400 teams competed in creating games. According to the survey results, most of the participants used the Unity engine. But there is a caveat – two-thirds of the best games are made on GameMaker.

GMTK Game Jam is an annual gaming marathon, whose participants must develop and release a game for Windows or browsers on a given topic in 48 hours. In 2020, the jam was held for the fourth time and gathered a record number of participants – 5,400 teams from different countries.

Game journalist and GMTK Game Jam organizer Mark Brown decided this time to ask each of the teams and find out what engine they use during the jam? For the answer, you could choose Unity, Stencyl, Construct, Godot, Game Maker or write your own version in the “others” field

Mark shared the results of the survey on his Twitter page:

Most teams prefer to work on Unity (62.2%). In the “other” field, the participants noted the Unreal Engine, PICO-8 and games made on their own engine

As Mark wrote, he did not expect that so few people would choose Stencyl (0.1%) and Construct (1.7%), but the most surprising thing seemed to him different. With each narrowing of the selection, Game Maker takes up more and more space in it.

Top 250
Among the top 250 games on GMTK Game Jam 2020, 17.1% are made on Game Maker.

Top 100
26.3% of participants in the top 100 chose Game Maker.

Top 10
Game Maker has become the engine for two thirds of the top 10 games.

Mark Brown is a former gaming journalist who collaborated with GamesRadar, Wired, The Escapist and others. He has a YouTube channel where he talks about video games and analyzes them from the perspective of game design. Since 2017, he has been running the GMTK Game Jam game marathon.

Also on the topic:

• Unity Learn Premium platform is now freeEvening Digest: Streaming service and $100 million, Mark Brown on Super Metroid, Paananen on Supercell
• Is there any news?