well torchlight and torchlight 2 is a relatively small studio and they used c++ and the ogre engine to create their game as far as i know. what language people choose to use may depend on the libraries they want to use. java over the years has gotten absolutely huge with the amount of libraries available which makes things easier and faster. they have actually done polls and stuff on the most used languages right now and its actually plain c which has the highest usage right now in the industry. this shocked me because c++ wasnt even on the list. alot of them are languages that most have never heard of. it was mostly comprised of scripting like languages. i think html was second. i wish i still had the link but there was some weird languages on there that you would never think of. c sharp wasnt on there at all either.

Developers are NEVER told to use a language even in the largest companies, if a team wants to write things in Basic, the company/marketing folks won't give a damn so long as you produce a game.

This I have to disagree with on many levels.

First the decision can come from above... in the form of "We got a licensing deal/promo offer/something else to use this piece of middleware... get to work!" In this day and age, the underlying engine dictates the language choice more than anything else.

Next, for companies not using an engine, its generally because they are working with legacy code. This generally forces the language on the dev team, and is probably a good part of the reason C++ remains as entrenched as it is.

Finally, its generally one or two people in the company that make the language decision... after that lowly peons put up or get out. It's the way of the world.

Thank you, I was actually wondering when someone would say this after he posted that.