They're shitty designers. https://twitter.com/rymcmanus/status/1350502551863644161

For some reason a lot of people have internalized the idea that design/game design is a job that's primarily about being personally expressive. That's certainly part of it, but that's not usually at the heart of design.

Game design, like design in other industries, is about continually considering needs and constraints. You're trying to accomplish a finite set of things within the boundaries of your restrictions and limitations.

Charles Eames said (paraphrased) that being a good designer is like being the host of a party who perceives, understands, and addresses the needs of their guests before they actually feel the need themselves.

Designers *are* responsible for the content they're creating. You're building experiences for people. You want them to go through something. So the personal aesthetics and creative spark are important, but the design work is figuring *how* the user will experience it.

If you direct or design by throwing things at a wall until you like it, that's not really directing or designing. Brainstorming and blue sky exercises are an important part of creative processes, but that's not usually what forms the backbone of *design*.

A personal design standard I try to follow is that good design in the end product is evident to someone who interacts with it using a critical eye.

I.e., a critically-minded person should be able to determine the designer's intent by comprehensively examining the design in use.

When I see that most/all players don't understand the point of a design, it's usually because the intent is not actually being realized in practice and the design isn't working.

Armor Rating/Penetration in Deadfire are a good example of this. In a purely *~ intellectual ~* sense, AR/Pen does what I wanted it to do. However, it's a harder system to understand than DT in Pillars 1, so many players simply don't engage with the system and get frustrated.

A system that "works better" but that players can't engage with does not, in practice "work better".