GameMaker Studio creators look back at 17 years of development

Making games is easier than ever — even if it’s still difficult to make good games. One of the tools that tries to enable creators to craft modern 2D games with relative ease, however, is GameMaker Studio from software firm YoYo Games. That software kit is now 17 years old, and the folks at YoYo are ready to look back over their accomplishments even as the company continues work on GameMaker Studio 2.

YoYo created GameMaker Studio in 1999. At that time, YoYo called it Animo, and it pitched it as a a way for developers to easily create 2D animations. Since then, a number of developers have used the toolkit to build their games. Highlights include the gravitational physics puzzler Orbit and the gorgeous action adventure Hyper Light Drifter. Since anyone can download GameMaker, Unreal, Unity, and a number of other engines and tools, I asked YoYo general manager James Cox about how his company’s software fits into the democratization of game development.