I shared some thoughts on this recently in a post titled "MYTH: Java not suitable for games". Some notable Java-based games include Minecraft, Runescape, Puzzle Pirates, Wurm Online, Spiral Knights, WAKFU, and Maker's Tale (still in development, but making great progress). Although it wouldn't be my personal choice of language -- I dislike some of the conventions and design decisions -- it's more than capable of creating good quality video-games, and the limiting factor (if there is any) will be your programming capabilities rather than any deficiency in the language or platform, and although slightly lower-level languages have their advantages you may even find the experience easier than using a language like C++ where you have to manually manage your memory.

Note that in those cases where the example games listed above -- or the example games for the engines and libraries listed below -- have simpler or more primitive looking art this is usually a stylistic choice or a result of cheaper/simpler art assets rather than a limitation of the language and platform. A lot of beginners fall into the (somewhat understandable) trap of thinking that because some of the games have what they consider to be poorer graphics that the language or engine must be to blame, but it's very rare that this is the case.

I think it's a good choice for anyone comfortable with the language, and there are some good library and engine choices available including jMonkeyEngine, lwjgl, and Slick, amongst others. The Android SDK is also in Java, and although they do also provide an "NDK" for C and C++ developers they state that "using native code on Android does not result in a noticeable performance improvement".


You can proceed and be happy with your choice of Java for games development.

Hope that helps!

: : Elaboration.

I shared some thoughts on this recently in a post titled "MYTH: Java not suitable for games". Some notable Java-based games include Minecraft, Runescape, Puzzle Pirates, Wurm Online, Spiral Knights, WAKFU, and Maker's Tale (still in development, but making great progress). Although it wouldn't be my personal choice of language -- I dislike some of the conventions and design decisions -- it's more than capable of creating good quality video-games, and the limiting factor (if there is any) will be your programming capabilities rather than any deficiency in the language or platform, and although slightly lower-level languages have their advantages you may even find the experience easier than using a language like C++ where you have to manually manage your memory.

I think it's a good choice for anyone comfortable with the language, and there are some good library and engine choices available including jMonkeyEngine, lwjgl, and Slick, amongst others. The Android SDK is also in Java, and although they do also provide an "NDK" for C and C++ developers they state that "using native code on Android does not result in a noticeable performance improvement".


You can proceed and be happy with your choice of Java for games development.