SGI's STL implementation and later EA STL were game changers for C++ imo, they really kicked off "modern C++" as we knew it.

C++ was used in game development long before the STL was widely used or even reliably supported by compilers.

The object-oriented and high performance features of C++ make it a good match for games. Seems to me this makes Rust a fairly natural choice for high-performance games in future.

Rust by design tries to discourage you from using object-oriented patterns. Not saying you can't write games with it, but it'd look more similar to C than C++.

Interesting, I hadn't thought of Rust as discouraging object orientation particularly. But then, I think of the Linux kernel as object-oriented C in places.

If you look at Unity, although the games are written in C#, there is a heavy emphasis on mixins for giving functionality to game objects, rather than inheritance or interfaces.

Between mixins and the ECS pattern, I think Rust's trait-oriented style looks aligned with that trend.