Independent Games Summit: A Case for Making Your Own Engine

This GDC talk discusses the trade-offs of using commercial game engines versus building a custom engine from scratch.

There are a nearly endless set of engines to choose from out, from massive AAA behemoths like Unreal to much smaller engines like Godot or even RenPy. Each of these engines offers a starting point, but they all come at a cost. The alternative is to build an engine from scratch, which is often seen as completely untenable. This 2024 Independent Games Summit session discusses when and why one might consider building their own game engine. GDC returns to San Francisco in March 2025! For more information, be sure to visit our website and follow the #GDC2025 hashtag on social media. Subscribe to the GDC newsletter and get regular updates via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or RSS. Join the GDC mailing list: gdconf.com/subscribe Follow GDC on Twitter: twitter.com/Official_GDC GDC talks cover a range of developmental topics including game design, programming, audio, visual arts, business management, production, online games, and much more. We post a fresh GDC video every day. Subscribe to the channel to stay on top of regular updates, and check out GDC Vault for thousands of more in-depth talks from our archives.