Yes. I see such people in many forums. Some of them collect game engines and I have to admit, I also spent a lot of money in this area (Gamestudio, Lawmaker, C4, Torque Showtool Pro plus I worked with Irrlicht, Beyond Virtual, Ogre and evaluated Gamebryo, Unity and others). I even created an episode of 9 levels for the first Doom game with an ancient editor.

But I indeed use many of them on a regular base. I render models and textures for our web shop and test import workflow and check for render problem.

I am indeed close to get a T3D license. For my purpose it looks very complete. I have shaders, shadow-mapping, post-processing and real-time editing plus scripting. It is very important for me to setup scenes fast and directly and to get results instantly. I cannot spend weeks because I want to finish something and turn toward the next model or texture pack fast.

I am sure the same counts for people who make small games. Id-Software wants to release games for the iPhone every 2-3 months now. This makes sense. If you want to live from that then you have to finish such small projects fast. And because of that you need a good workflow.

But it depends on the project what technology fits better then. Gamestudio is only an option for Windows games. If you want to have more platforms then you have to check Shiva, Unity3d and Torque products. They all have modern tools. You will find good docs for Torgue Game Builder (2d-games) and Unity3d. I dont know how good the Shiva docs are.