Most popular languages these days insist on runnning in a VM even though the benefits for video games are questionable compared to their runtime cost.

Few languages are designed to be compiled natively while still offering a diverse set of high level paradigms such as OO programming, meta programming and functional programming. There's basically mostly C++ and D that fit this category. Only one of those two is a mature language with a proven design and a huge ecosystem of tools, compilers, libraries, and frameworks.

Template meta programming in particular allows C++ to combine very good runtime performance with very good abstraction capabilities. There's pretty much no other language that have both of those things along with a big ecosystem.

Most popular languages these days insist on runnning in a VM even though the benefits for video games are questionable compared to their runtime cost.

Few languages are designed to be compiled natively while still offering a diverse set of high level paradigms such as OO programming, meta programming and functional programming. There's basically mostly C++ and D that fit this category. Only one of those two is a mature language with a proven design and have a huge ecosystem of tools, compilers, libraries, and frameworks.

Template meta programming in particular allows C++ to combine very good runtime performance with very good abstraction capabilities. There's pretty much no other language that have both of those things along with a big ecosystem.