This “flavor” at the engine level doesn’t always make it back up to the end user, and even if it does, it is likely something that could have been replicated by existing engines, if developers cared enough to do it right.

There are very few games where the engine is what made all the difference. Maybe something like Half Life 2 with the source engine is the exception, but ultimately, what makes a game good are traits that can be universally applicable to any engine.

Truth is, it’s not that 90s anymore. Hardware has advanced to the point that you can have general purpose game engines that can be molded to any type of game. You do not need purpose built engines anymore.

And someday, if you can imagine, we’ll just have AI churning out visual representation of game state, turning game development purely into a declarative data driven exercise.

> we’ll just have AI churning out visual representation of game state, turning game development purely into a declarative data driven exercise

Yeah, no. Perhaps on the mobile slop world as vehicle to sell ads, but I wouldn’t even count those as games.