I was checking the sorted list of most used engines: https://itch.io/game-development/engines/most-projects
which is based on the number of projects using this engine every week, you can see it in the figures.
But then I saw there is also a sort by popularity: https://itch.io/game-development/engines
which has a completely different order. How is it measured? I don’t think it’s about creators rating the engine itself as not all of them have an itch.io page (and I suppose people don’t often do that?)
so maybe it’s about players rating games made with the engine? Which would place more niche engines at the top like Ren’Py because of genre, creator experience, game length, easiness to create, etc. increase the statistics of players giving good ratings?
I don’t need a precise formula but just an idea of what the sorting means and how I can use this information to understand indie dev activity / player reception.