Poll started by INtense! with 220 votes and 6 comments. Browse the poll archive.
I choose the one best suited to my game type (66 votes)
I choose the one with the best developer terms (cost, royality etc) (27 votes)
I choose the one which is most popular so it has to be good right? (8 votes)
I choose the one which i'm familiar with and know how to develop for (119 votes)
I voted "familiar". I think that most engines are flexible enough for different game styles. Still, Crytek is based C++ and uses Lua scripts - so my responce is based on languages.
Most Popular? - Unless you can understand and learn how to develop your games for it, Waste of Time!
Most Suited? - Waste of Time! No such thing. American McGee's Grim should prove a better example being made with the Unreal Engine 3.
Most Affordable? - Self-Explanatory. Depends... (perhaps.... a Waste of Time!)
Most Familiar? - Perfect Choice! An engine you can easily understand and learn to use is always a man's best friend.
I would say between choice 1 and 4.
You cannot throw away the fact of engines suited for game types, since some engines specialize in some genres, making your life a whole lot easier.
On the other hand, being familiar with a toolset is a big plus - but what if there is an entirely new toolset out there that supports a whole lot more things that would make your games better?
You always need to think outside of the box.
I agree with Desiderium. Let's say you would like to make a iPhone game with a p2p multiplayer feature, you are familiar with as3 but you cannot achieve it with as3 compared to xcode. Then it could be necessary to learn xcode and thus - not a waste of time.
A known example is Terraria for OSX. The developers of Terraria started making Terraria without knowing how huge it would become and therefore they used C# in the XNA Game Studio which isn't supported by OSX. If they would have know the success it would make before they started developing, maybe they'd taken time and learned a language that is suited for more platforms.
I voted familiar..
i voted familiar