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"Lots of great games have been made in GameMaker, but for a long time it just wasn't knowledge that's how they were made because people didn't ask that question." Starting From Scratch But if they see something really crude that was made by a complete amateur, and then they find out it was made in GameMaker, that's the perception that sticks. "The problem is that if something looks good, people don't ask themselves how it was made. "There's nothing about many great GameMaker games that's particularly technologically advanced," Francis said.

(It took Francis three years to complete Gunpoint, for example.)īut even so, GameMaker to some degree still carries a stigma-a problem that largely stems from confirmation bias. "Many of these people needed a couple of years to build up their skills before they could finish a cool big project." In other words, game development takes time, so we're only now seeing the output of these early adopters. "GameMaker appealed to people who were more into being creative than they were good at programming," said Jonatan Söderström, creator of Hotline Miami. But at some point I realized that the players don't care what tools you used to make a game, they only thing they ask is if the game is fun." "I felt this preconception that if you made games with GameMaker," de Paco said, "it was like using RPG Maker, where it wasn't really a game. Jordi de Paco, creator of the recently-released GameMaker-built Gods Will Be Watching, says he had been aware of the software for some time, but his prejudgment kept him from giving it a try. It really comes down to a problem with perception. So then why have we really only started hearing about GameMaker in the past year or so? Steam has been the mega-behemoth distribution service it is now since at least 2007. Slowly, all the game design hopefuls who found coding hopelessly daunting have an approachable way to turn great ideas into great games.īut the indie revolution has been happening for years.

But since 2008, a slew of successful, high-profile indie games have emerged using GameMaker-Spelunky, Nidhogg, Hotline Miami, and Francis' Gunpoint, to name a few. "That's so impressive!")Īt first the tool was mostly used by hobbyists wanting to dabble in game making-not anyone looking to sell a game, let alone make a living from game design. ("I can't believe you made this in GameMaker!" Francis recalls people saying. But in part because of this ease-of-use, GameMaker has carried a stigma that it wasn't capable or worthy of powering high-quality, "professional" games. Its goal is to break down the game development process into something approachable and easy to learn, shifting the main challenge facing game designers from technical knowledge to creative ability. GameMaker: Studio, the latest version of the tool, has been developed by YoYoGames since 2006.