So, in case you don't know, Wildfire was made in GameMaker. I'm gonna confess that the first (and only, perhaps with good reason) time I met Dan, I basically yelled at him "Why would you do that to yourself!?"

He had a pretty good answer that wasn't all about sunk cost, and can be summed up as it was the best tool for him at the time. I STILL feel like he could've saved himself much pain, but what the fuck do I know? If I ever make something as good as Wildfire, I'll die happy.

My crappy engine elitism comes from the dev perspective, but you will have heard it coming even more strongly from even less knowledgeable people. A few years ago, it was particularly cool to hate on Unity games. I'm glad that's died down a little, but it hasn't gone away.

I've also recently become a total Godot convert, another tool of which I had previously been quite dismissive, and I guess where I'm going with this rambling thread is that *takes deep breath* THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PROFESSIONAL OR UNPROFESSIONAL TOOL.

You could make a really convincing argument that a paintbrush is a better tool for applying paint than a palette knife. Even that a palette knife ISN'T a tool for applying paint, but for mixing it. But that hasn't stopped great artists from making masterpieces with them.

So please join me in this. The next time we, you and I, hear about someone using an unexpected or undervalued tool, let's begin from the assumption that they know how to paint masterpieces with that palette knife, and rephrase our "why?" from a challenge into an actual question.

And if there's a tool that you KNOW that you undervalue, and wonder why so many people are into it, whether it be Twine or Blender or whatever, maybe spend some real time playing around with it. You might discover why it's so well loved.

I mean, maybe I'm the only arsehole here, and I just need to join you in doing those things, because you were already.

One last thing (sorry for the novel in tweet form). In this thread I mentioned Twine, Blender, Godot. It's no accident that the most widely disparaged and undervalued tools are free. It's not because they're not good; it's because they don't have marketing budgets.