10 Best programming languages for video game development
Gaming Industry in the USA
The booming gaming industry in the US generates billions of dollars in revenue and employs thousands of individuals. According to Statista, the video games industry’s market size in the US reached 85.86 billion U.S. dollars in 2021 and is projected to reach 97.67 billion U.S. dollars by 2023. Video Game development constitutes the largest sector, accounting for 65% of total employment in 2019. Key players in the US gaming industry include Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, and Epic Games.
Renowned for innovation and creativity, the US gaming industry produces some of the world’s most popular and influential games. Recent trends include the release of next-generation consoles like PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, the growth of mobile and cloud gaming, the emergence of the metaverse and virtual reality, and the increasing popularity of video game content viewership on platforms like Twitch and YouTube. The industry experiences substantial investment and merger and acquisition activity as companies aim to expand market share and diversify portfolios.
Despite challenges such as tough competition from regions like Asia, regulatory issues, and social and ethical concerns, including diversity, inclusion, accessibility, and gaming addiction, the US gaming industry is poised for continued growth and innovation. Anticipated advancements in technologies, genres, and platforms are expected to meet the diverse and evolving needs and preferences of gamers in the coming years.
Video Game Development
Here are the top best programming languages for video game development.
Swift
Apple developed Swift as a modern programming language for iOS and macOS development. iOS developers must possess knowledge of Swift, a requirement in coding interviews. Swift, designed for various Apple operating systems like iOS, tvOS, macOS, and watchOS, follows a multi-paradigm, general-purpose approach. Swift works seamlessly with Apple’s Cocoa framework and Objective C library within Apple products. The file extension for Swift files is .swift, supporting core components inherited from Objective C. Swift is not only an open-source programming language but also developer-friendly.
Lua
Lua, a widely used scripting language in the gaming industry, Learning Lua is crucial due to its extensive use in video game development, enabling its embedding in other applications for functionality extension and customization. Lua supports various programming paradigms, including procedural, object-oriented, and functional programming. Its efficiency, speed, and portability position it as a sought-after scripting language in popular game engines like Roblox.
Kotlin
Kotlin, a modern and concise programming language, actively serves Android game development. It seamlessly integrates with Java, enabling the utilization of existing Java libraries and frameworks within Kotlin projects.
Choosing Kotlin for Android game development opens avenues for leveraging the Android Game Development Kit (AGDK), a toolkit comprising tools and libraries for optimizing games on Android devices. The AGDK encompasses resources like the Android Game Development Extension for Visual Studio, allowing game development in Visual Studio on Windows. Additionally, the AGDK offers libraries for frame pacing, game activity, game controller, game text input, memory advice, oboe audio, and Android Performance Tuner.
Another approach involves using Kotlin for Instant Games – lightweight, immersive gaming experiences playable across various platforms. While Instant Games are typically constructed with HTML5 and JavaScript, employing Kotlin/JS facilitates the compilation of Kotlin code to JavaScript and access to web APIs. Instant Games, despite limitations like a 4 MB size constraint and no access to native features, present an opportunity to reach a broad audience through platforms like Facebook Messenger, Google Play Games, and Snapchat.
Java
Java, a popular programming language, actively contributes to gaming development, offering several advantages. These include platform independence, allowing it to run on different operating systems and devices without requiring recompilation. Java benefits from a large and active community of developers providing support, libraries, frameworks, and tools for gaming development. Its rich feature set encompasses object-oriented programming, concurrency, generics, lambda expressions, and streams, enabling developers to write expressive and efficient code. Java supports multiple paradigms, including imperative, declarative, functional, and reactive programming, empowering developers to choose the best approach for their gaming logic.
Notable games developed using Java include Minecraft, Runescape, Worms, and Angry Birds. Java is also versatile in creating web-based games using technologies like JavaFX, Swing, HTML5, and JavaScript.
Despite its strengths, Java presents challenges for developers. It may not match the speed of native languages like C or C++, impacting game performance and responsiveness. Memory management requirements can lead to issues like memory leaks and garbage collection pauses, disrupting gameplay. Java’s steep learning curve, especially for beginners mastering syntax, concepts, and conventions, poses a challenge.
Python
Python, a widely used high-level programming language in video game development, offers simplicity and elegance with a minimalistic syntax, dynamic typing, and automatic memory management. It features an extensive collection of libraries and frameworks, including Pygame, Pyglet, Panda3D, Kivy, and PyOpenGL, covering various aspects of video game development.
Despite its advantages, Python has drawbacks, including lower performance compared to C++, lack of support for multithreading and multiprocessing, and dependency on the Python interpreter. Notable games developed with Python include Civilization IV, Eve Online, Frets on Fire, and PyWeek games.
JavaScript
JavaScript, a widely adopted scripting language, is actively employed in the creation of interactive and dynamic web applications. Its utility extends beyond web development, encompassing game creation for various platforms, including browsers.
JavaScript holds several advantages for game development. Firstly, its ease of learning and use, characterized by a simple syntax and a robust community of developers, facilitates efficient development. Moreover, JavaScript’s cross-platform compatibility ensures games can reach a wide audience across different browsers and devices without necessitating installations. The language supports diverse programming paradigms and libraries, such as object-oriented, functional, and event-driven programming.
The efficiency of JavaScript is further enhanced by features like JIT compilation, garbage collection, and asynchronous operations, contributing to improved game performance and responsiveness. In summary, JavaScript emerges as a versatile and powerful language, adept at crafting engaging and immersive games for diverse purposes and audiences.
Rust
Rust is gaining popularity in systems programming, especially for projects demanding high performance and low-level control. The programming language itself offers high performance, reliability, and memory safety. Rust’s use is on the rise in gaming development, particularly in the creation of cross-platform games for multiple devices. Facilitating game development, Rust boasts a rich ecosystem of libraries and tools covering graphics, audio, physics, networking, and user interface features. Furthermore, Rust benefits from a friendly and active community, providing support and guidance for both beginners and experts.
HTML5
HTML5, a markup language, actively creates interactive and engaging web games. These games can run on any browser supporting the HTML5 standard, ensuring cross-platform accessibility for a wide user range. Leveraging features from the HTML5 specification, such as canvas, audio, video, web sockets, and web workers, HTML5 games craft rich and immersive gaming experiences. Development and distribution of HTML5 games are straightforward, requiring no plugins or downloads for play.
C#
C# holds popularity as a programming language for video game development, particularly in the creation of games with the Unity engine. It is an object-oriented language, empowering developers to craft reusable and modular code while accessing potent features like delegates, generics, and LINQ. Notably, C# supports cross-platform development, enabling games written in it to seamlessly run on diverse devices, including Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and more.
C++
C++ delivers high performance, flexibility, and control over low-level details. It proves versatile for creating games across various platforms such as PC, console, mobile, and web. The advantages of using C++ for video game development include supporting multiple models like object-oriented, procedural, generic, and functional programming, and facilitating the organization of complex game logic and data structures. C++ permits direct access to hardware resources like memory, graphics, and sound, enhancing the speed and efficiency of game engines and graphics rendering. The language thrives with a large and active community of developers contributing libraries, frameworks, and tools for video game development.
Conclusion
Choosing the right programming language for a game developer constitutes one of the most crucial decisions. Various languages possess distinct strengths and weaknesses, including considerations for performance, portability, ease of use, and compatibility with different engines and platforms. C++, C#, Java, Python, and JavaScript have emerged as some of the most popular languages. Each language presents its own set of advantages and disadvantages.
