So, you're bypassing Unity?

[jomoengineer]

Recently I went to a local Game Developer Meetup that I have been signed up to but not attended yet and it was a bit interesting. The main draw was that there was a person from the local EA Mobile group who spoke about sound in games. After the event, I mingled with some folks and when they asked me what I was working on, I mentioned being interested in developing with OpenGL-ES.  This caused some eye brow raising and a question: "So, you're bypassing Unity?"  It seemed a bit foreign to these folks that anyone would use anything other than a tool such as Unity to do any sort of development.

I do find this interesting though since there were folks calling themselves Game Coders but did not actually code; they just used what Unity gave them.

Is this common?

[Brian Beuken]

Sadly yes.

Its something i have a big issue with. The rise of the "Game Developer", ie someone who uses an engine to create games but has little real understanding of the code behind it or how to expand it to do more.

This is fine though, it brings exciting game ideas to the market that would not normally make it, but it has resulted in my view, in people taking the "easy" road to game development and avoiding what they think is a hard topic, ie coding.
fortunately there are still lots of people who want to learn to code and make new engines, or write their own, they understand the complexity of coding and get a kick out of it. So i will keep working to stimulate those "developers" and hope they can go on to make life eaiser in the future for the ...other ones

[jomoengineer]

In the long run, I believe it would be best for them to learn at least some aspect of true programming just in case they find themselves in need of another job. This also expands their marketability in the long run.

However, to truly get the most out of something like Unity, it is best to be able to get down and dirty and learn to code in C#, C++, UnityScript or perhaps Python to improve the performance of the game.

[web2gamedevconvert]

I see this over here all the time too.
At every meetup, everyone is using either Unity, or Unreal Engine.
Then maybe an occasional NodeJS game, and there I am with a game written from the ground up in C++.

Its something i have a big issue with. The rise of the "Game Developer", ie someone who uses an engine to create games but has little real understanding of the code behind it or how to expand it to do more.

This is fine though,  it brings exciting game ideas to the market that would not normally make it, but it has resulted in my view, in people taking the "easy" road to game development and avoiding what they think is a hard topic, ie coding.
fortunately there are still lots of people who want to learn to code and make new engines, or write their own, they understand the complexity of coding and get a kick out of it. So i will keep working to stimulate those "developers" and hope they can go on to make life eaiser in the future for the ...other ones

And the exact same thing can be said about web development.
Most people would rather choose the "easy" path by just spinning up a PHP framework like Laravel or Symfony rather than actually learning how to write in PHP from scratch, which was still the norm 2 decades ago.

Even regular software development isn't safe, because we all used to write programs in C or C++ (or Objective-C on Mac, or C# on Windows), and make use of Xorg API (or Win32 API, or Cocoa API, depending on your operating system), and now every now desktop application is yet another Electron abomination.
For those who don't know, Electron is basically a headless Chromium instance which loads a website that pretends to be a desktop application.

This might be the "easy" road in the short run, but in the long run, all these huge frameworks/engines will come back to bite your arse eventually.
I used to use Unity to publish 2 games on Nintendo consoles before, but nowadays I prefer to actually understand the platform I'm working with.
Having to deal with all those fancy GUI buttons is just demotivating, especially if your PC unleashes so much heat from the bloated engine on top of the already unbearable summer heat.