That graph isn't 13% "make their own game engine." It is 13% as "other." There are a LOT of other game engines out there. Very, very few games roll their own.
Except a ton of successful indie games, including some of the best of all time:
Minecraft, Braid, the Witness, Dwarf Fortress, Stardew Valley, Terraria, Fez, Animal Well, and probably a bunch I haven't heard of or forgot.
Also most AAA studios and a lot of AA studios.
Most game engines were also born out of a game. Source, Unreal, IDTech all were games first, then the engine was extracted.
But most indie games do not roll their own engine. Even this widely shared post aiming to show off games with custom engines, ends up listing a ton of games with notes like "OGRE-based" or "MonoGame-based." I'm sorry, but that's not a custom engine. That's an atypical engine choice (OGRE or MonoGame) with tweaks. Maybe I'm being a pedant, but I think the difference matters.
https://gist.github.com/raysan5/909dc6cf33ed40223eb0dfe625c0...
Unfortunately I don't think there are good numbers on how many truly original / custom / no-engine games are out there, in absolute or market terms. 13% is the ceiling, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was much smaller (e.g. <5%).
You compared a full-on 3D renderer to something that's basically the same as SDL or Raylib. Ogre could be considered a game engine but XNA/Monogame definitely isn't (nor is SDL or Raylib).
> But most indie games do not roll their own engine.
Most indie games are slop that are barely more than a template with pre-purchased assets and sell zero copies. There's no point talking about most of something when 99% gets thrown straight into the garbage.
> The most successful indie games often have their own unique aesthetic, and rolling their own game engine, while not strictly necessary, does make that uniqueness the default outcome rather than something you have to strive hard to achieve.
Yup and that's the point. Code is art as much as art is art. Sure, you can get a basic game made in a couple hours with Godot, but what's the value or uniqueness when anyone can do the same?
Yeah Monogame doesn't do that.
Pretty much every definition of framework vs game engine puts Monogame, SDL, Raylib, SFML, libGDX, LÖVE2D, etc... in the framework category. Engines are Unity, Unreal, Godot, Defold, O3DE, etc...
It kinda doesn't though
What it provides is the tools to build on top of to make those things yourself
Is there any chance they meant most "real" indie games? If they did, does the observation about chances of rolling one's own engine change?
But then things like Fez as you mentioned, back in 2012 when it came out, it would have been a real struggle to put together with off the shelf engines. I could see it being much easier now but still a product of its time.
One studio I am endlessly impressed with is Enhance games. Tetris Effect (UE4),Rez Infinite (UE4), Humanity (Unity) and Lumines Arise (Unity). When you fire them up, you would be really hard pressed to know what engine they are running as they have made the end results so unique that the base engines traits are almost completely gone. That is a real talent.
But if you have some unique tech that just needs to see the light of day or a work p=flow that just doesn't fit what everyone else is providing, go with your own engine. There will never be a one size fits all.
I'm not necessarily making any judgement about what someone should do. Rolling your own engine for a story based game is probably a bad use of time. But the idea that few successful indies have rolled their own is false.
I agree - if you're just doing something that needs some assets placed, some interactions, rendering, some physics, use an off the shelf engine. But the idea that it's impossible or not worthwhile to roll your own is repeated too much.
Regarding Source, Unreal, etc, that was back in the day when making an engine was much easier than today, due to lower player and graphics demands, which they then iterated on.
I don't know specifically about how creating game engines was back in the day with lower level languages, but I can hardly imagine it was easier than today. I don't know of many things that are harder today than ~30 years ago when I first touched a computer, everything seemingly is getting easier and easier. Especially creating games, and for sure creating game engines. I'm not complaining, I'm loving the Cambrian explosion of games and especially indie games, but I do think we're seeing more and more games and game engines being made because it is easier today, not harder.
Yeah there's successful games that used an off the shelf engine but saying very few roll there own is plainly wrong when a bunch have. And that's without mentioning the whole flash era...
Around 300 of those are successful, making over $1 million [1]. VERY few of those successes are using custom engines. Your list is probably close to complete, being far less than 1%.
[1] https://www.shanethegamer.com/research/indie-games-statistic...
If you want to do something no one has done artistically, it helps if you're also doing something no one has done technically.
And novel designs stand out. It's no coincidence how many of those wildly successful games introduce totally new game designs, only made possible through their totally new game engines.
True. A lot of successful indie games are built in a custom engine. But that doesn't imply that all successful indie games need to be built on a custom engine or that someone is going to have more success by going the custom engine route.
The best of all time is a bar quite high. Success is already a few rungs down the ladder.
"Other" in that document means custom game engines.