"If I feel like something's going to be a pain in the ass with the drag-and-drop interface, I'll just look up what the code instructions are for those particular actions and write them in a little script," Francis said. The more complex an event, the more space it takes up in GameMaker's visual interface. "The cool thing for me is I wasn't confident enough to start coding, and so I was able to use these drag-and-drop actions to define how I wanted things to work on a very basic level."Īs games get larger and more intricate, it becomes more and more useful to build them using code-not so much out of necessity, but more of convenience. "It just depends on how much you want to use this drag-and-drop interface, or how much you're ready to start coding," Francis said. Rooms are not necessarily physical rooms-an adventure game might give each scene its own room, for example, or a space game could use a single giant room for the entire galaxy-and objects can either be physical things in the game or abstract things you never see or interact with, such as the camera or a level generator. In GameMaker, you build a game by creating "rooms," placing objects inside, and assigning events to affect those objects-all via a drag-and-drop interface. "GameMaker is all about taking away those barriers." "For most game development processes, the limitations of the process dictate what can go into the actual game," said YoYo Games CTO Russell Kay. YoYo Games' vision for GameMaker is all about democratizing the game development process, breaking it down to something simplified and approachable. "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.
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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.