Say, you use the same foundation for both the game and tool. Nothing prevents you from building features on top that are optimized either for a tool or for a game! Plus you dogfood the system all the time.
That's not my experience. It's about momentum. They are vastly different things with vastly different needs. A game needs data in an optimal form, a tool needs data in a flexible form. Those 2 things are in conflict. So game tools based on engines usually suck because they are designed inside the engine's data structures, which don't match the needs of the tools. Yes, in some imaginary ideal world it would work but it never does in actuality.
nox101|2 years ago