Even this post could be misinterpreted as a catch-22 whose core idea is that amount of games played=inability to develop a good video game, when really the point is that people who romanticize and idolize video games are likely to be poor at the actual development process due to uncontrolled passion and misplaced judgement. You and 40b7ae gives off it is exactly this, just this that causes new game developers to make bad products, when it's the seasoned gamer's wisdom and cognitive skills, not his experience and time spent playing video games, that determine the design philosophy and quality of a game he works on. If it can be learned and understood why video games are developed the way they have been, then certainly it means the people who play them are not pigeonholed into only making imitations or worse clones of the products they've played. Essentially this is a matter of both self-control of one's aspirations, as well as vertical and horizontal thinking. The most true thing to take from this thread is that idea guys are just shitty. They're called idea guys because their most useful function in the creation of a video game are concepts that they themselves cannot attempt to develop alone, and the one thing everyone can do is think of ideas and concepts. The second someone becomes capable of actually making a video game, he stops being an idea guy, though I wonder if having lots of money should be considered an acceptable condition for one to avoid being correctly labeled an idea guy.