An interesting alternative to using General Game development IDE is to use game "editors". Some games are distributed with built-in editors. These are the same tools that the development team had used to create the levels, maps, stages of phases of the game, which itselves have been also created by the game developers.

 The player can freely use the editor to build his own level, including his own art, images and sounds. Some editors allow to simply make some modifications to default maps while most allow to heavily tune and develop new maps and levels.

Game genres which usually include editors are real time strategy and First Person Shooters. From a certain point of view, An editable or modificable game consist in the following elements:

• A set of resources or assets like images, sounds, animations, etc that compose the basic aspect of objects of the game
• A set of maps, levels or stages that conform one in many challenges that the player has to complete
• A software that takes the above elements and creates the actual game by running the maps and resources. This element is called "Game Engine"

To create a game, you may need just to choose one Game with built-in editor and then design levels and resources for it. Many if not all editors feature some scripting programming language that enables a precise and detailed behaviour of game elements (enemies, projectiles, "power-ups", etc)

This approach has been taken further on. To develop some really complex games, programmers take two phases with different outcomes. Initially they build a Game engine which can run a game but the contents are created separately. The Game engine is paired with a specialized editor used to generate levels, graphics, characters, etc. for this engine only. Then, in a second stage they complete all the game content that build up the story of the game in levels.

When the game is finished, two products are available for the public: the actual game with the full content together with the engine built in, and the editor to be used by enthusiast who like to make new content. They can be sold separately leading to some developers using the engine and its editor to build up some different game, not just a modification or extension of the original game. Sometimes, the Game engine is announced and sold to third parties or people independently even before any game has been completed with that Engine. But still these can not be considered "general purpose" game development tools because they are aimed at one precise type of game from the beginning.

This is different from simply "a game with a built-in editor".