Games that look a lot like all the other games made with it, but its impressive nonetheless 
That doesnât answer the question if the people who make games with it impress in any way though!
Iâve been impressed by at least one person who is using Game Maker. But there are other ways to impress than just to have coding skills 
Hi
Proprietary WYSIWYG game editors can be helpful to make games but they are black boxes. If something goes really wrong under the hood, you canât fix anything. Some of them are very limited and sometimes very buggy. As I explained here, your choice should depend on how deep you want to go on the long term.
I respect people who succeed in creating great games whatever the tools they use even though I have a preference for free / open source and cross-platform ones but like some Java developers here, Iâm really fed up with those who think that they have just created the new world wonder by spending a few hours with a game maker, especially when they laugh about my few games. There are different tools for different needs and different skills.
Markus (Notch) has made several great games even though Minecraft is the most famous one. I respect Carmack but I would like him to respect the right of paternity especially when it concerns the scientific studies that he has used for years (not only French papers), public fundamental research isnât useless after all.
Unity- multiple platform support, simple to use, can quickly make high quality games, not the best quality from start sometimes, free version is pretty good
UDK- great lighting shaders, more complicated (Iâve had UDK for about 3 months now and I still canât figure out how to import a .obj file :â( )
These are the engines that Iâm most accustomed to using (unity more than UDK)
Wait, that totally depends on your definition of âGame Creatorâ.
For me, it is Game Factory, Multimedia Fusion, and Game Maker. (Anything you donât have to use an ounce of programming to use.)
You properly defended âGame Librariesâ like LibGDX and Slick2D. You have to know a minimalist amount of programming to do these. This does not fall under my âGame Creatorâ tent as you need to know programming to make the edits to the open source and in general.
âProgramming Frameworksâ like Java2D and LWJGL are the building blocks in which to learn.
So yeah, I do agree that Plug-n-Play is the future, but it doesnât have the power of the normal frameworks or libraries. From a development perspective, you always want to move closer to natives.
Most definitely! If youâd ever have the chance to taste my cooking, youâd be very impressed!
I was thinking about game design, but cooking will definitely work too ;D
Some developers donât want to move closer to natives. Just have a look at Ardor3D and JMonkeyEngine forums, some developers contribute, some others just behave like âcustomersâ of these APIs, they donât want to understand what happens underneath, they just want to make their things work.
I have always had some respect for developers that decide to not want to know how the innards tick and have some form of success in getting things done having that lack of a foundation. I for one can only be productive if I work from the ground up; I couldnât do graphics programming using higher level frameworks or game engines if I wouldnât learn OpenGL or Direct3D and the theory behind them first, Iâd just have too many blanks preventing me from understanding the whole but I guess other people are quite capable of bridging those gaps themselves.
Similarly, I wouldnât be so productive with Java or any other programming platform if I didnât learn first how computers and operating systems work internally because Iâd be too inclined to work against the underlying platform than with it, but other people are.
Yes, itâs admirable in some respects that a developer would âjust go for itâ, but in taking this approach I would think that the degree of success would depend much more greatly on the functionality and completeness of the tools being used. If the toolset is very well designed then many pathways will exist for the proper implementation of a personâs or teamâs ideas. That said, even the most feature-rich tool is going to have its limitations. If a developer runs into one of these limitations then is he/she willing to change the original idea in order to make it fit within the toolset? This is when I would walk away from the tool, provided I wasnât too far along in the development of my game.
I have always likened Game Maker, Unity3D, etc. as being somebody elseâs sandbox that you have no control over. What do you do when the sandbox doesnât have something that you need, or when it suddenly changes in an undesirable way?
Yeah, Iâm very much the same. It may have more to do with personality and how a person approaches problems. For example, whenever I am doing workâwhether it be coding, vacuuming, exercising, or whateverâI am always efforting to improve the efficiency of my technique. Usually the best way to do this is to understand more about the underlying mechanics of a process and then understand how to work with them instead of against them. So if you understand the principles of computer graphics then one would hope that the work you are doing in a particular tool is somehow benefiting from this. If not then thatâs another reason to ditch a tool.
Just as a general rule, I think that the more precise your needs are then the more difficulties you will have pulling them off in somebody elseâs environment.
And it has certainly found a large and willing audienceâŚ
I like that GameMaker provides the greenest of the green with an introduction to computer logic. But beyond this I despise everything else about the software. At times I get a vague impression that YoYoGames is trying to convince people that game development can be just as easy and fun as playing video games, and thatâs really how the company is making its money.
Iâm sick of learning things. There, I said it. Iâve been learning things for 40 years. Now Iâd just like to get on and actually use the knowledge that Iâve learned for a bit and put it to some use.
Cas
That is how most companies make money.
Hey look you can become the next Notch by using âx framework/engine/pooâ. It is all drag and drop no CODING required. Yeah!!!
I have tried GameMaker/Oger/JME/Unity/Construct/LOVE/little cocoas/several flash setups/and much more and all really are the same things. You HAVE to be able to code to create anything past pong. You also HAVE to have an artist to create anything people today give two shits about.
The big advantage most of these things have is the Visual editors. If libgdx had something like Unity, (not necessarily as huge and all componenty) it would blow up. People starting out love visual editors. They do not like staring at text. Developers also like visual level editors. Which is really what most of the game âenginesâ provide.
Personally, Iâm all for game engines like Unity, Unreal, etc., and I have no problem with people or teams using them.
You are all right. New people wanting to make games will instantly go looking for something like Unity or Gamemaker, and tutorials on how to use such things. Me being one of those that did it as well when I was new to game development.
Game Engines are simply things used to save time, such as a library, but with other features. Companies usually will write their own game engines or derive from existing engines (i.e. GoldSrc being based off of the original Quake 1 engine), but Iâve not really seen that many companies using things such as Unity. Though I am highly sure they exist. I donât really have an opinion on game engines as a whole, but if you are referring to the WYSIWYG editors/engines like Gamemaker, Construct 2, etc., then all I can say is that theyâre simply for the people that want to design without the use of code. And Iâll admit it, Iâve used Gamemaker a ton when prototyping basic ideas/concepts when I donât have the time to do any programming, and itâs not a horrible tool.
I do however think that WYSIWYG editors like Gamemaker/Construct 2 shouldnât be used much in things like Ludum Dare or 7DFPS, but thatâs just my opinion.
- Jev
The amount of games made in Unity for this Ludum Dare was just staggering⌠I tried to not have to install the plugin for it, but after seeing 10 games made in Unity, I decided to finally give in. I just feel like itâs cheating though. Sure, you make an awesome game, but thatâs only because the engine does a ton for you.
If youâre a carpenter or plumber, youâre much more effective with power tools.
We can all use a hammer and a nail to join two pieces of wood together, but youâd never build anything impressive. Youâd be doomed to hobby projects in the shack.
Why do we have this aversion to âpower toolsâ ? Do we feel itâs beneath us? Everybody using them is blowing us hobbyists out of the water with their productivity.
But doesnât this WYSIWYG approach of Unity actually hurts you more than it serves you once your games become more complex? Iâve never used it, but i watched a lot of tutorials on Youtube (just out of interest) and while you can do scripting of course, itâs all limited/bound to some visual entity (any may it be even invisible like a trigger). All these scripts were assigned and edited by clicking on some entity in the visual editor. Debugging this stuff has to be a nightmare.
I even looked at a tutorial where they did some grid generation for path finding by using some third party tool and even that was all visual. There was no âapply this grid creator script to this meshâ option. It was all about selecting, clicking, adding and removing stuff in the visual editor. I can hardly imagine how one can create a complex game with it, but it obviously has to be possible, because some people do exactly that. Then again, iâve also seen at least one complex game (rpg) created with Unity that was an absolute bug festival and they had to release more then 30! patches until now to make it at least somehow playable.
What do you mean? I never heard of anything about Carmack and scientific studies.
This is true, and I have no problem with developers using them when they understand what happens when they click that button. It seems like so many young people want to make games because its so cool, and they Google how to make games, and what do they get? Game maker and Unity and all these awesome game engines that will supposedly make your game pretty much for you. And then you have the tutorial series where you can actually learn to program everything yourself. Well, what would the average tween do in that situation given an easy way out (not that they know it is the easy way out)? They take the easy way and use these visual game engines and try to use them, realize its harder than they think and spam the internet with such simple questions its almost baffling. Most will quite any sort of computer science after that because of the bad experience they had.
Now some will stick with it and become awesome developers. Some will also learn how to actually program. These people I have no problem with if they use game engines. Because they know what they do internal, at least somewhat. I have issues with the people that sit down and start smacking buttons and hacking together some ugly platformer and then when it doesnât work, they complain and harass people for answers, and no one wants to deal with that.
tl;dr
I have no problem with people using game engines if they know at least somewhat how they work. Kids just randomly pushing buttons annoy me because they want to be Notch but donât want to put in the work to become talented.
Haha, you never stop learning. It is the curse of being born human. The moment you stop learning⌠youâre dead. 
To be honest, I started programming by looking at the visuals and moving into it from there. Programming is very intensive in math concepts and design. Many talents that good games require is actually something programmers canât do, like art and graphics. Game Maker actually turns programming into an art form, which is actually really good for the non-math inclined to get into.
We, the programming developers, will always get blown out of the water designing games; The most creative people out there are artists and musicians. Programmers are usually mostly by-the-book drones who believe using the same library, or the performing the same process will yield the same results. It is naive to think this way, and that is why we will always remain behind in gaming. Success isnât denoted by a strict equation when it comes to gaming. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we will appreciate Game Maker/Unity and what it is allowing people to do for game programming in general.