
Do you ever feel that "thinking like a game designer" inhibits your ability to enjoy games as much as you might have in the past before your career?
I don't really think so. If anything it's just given me less patience for poor design, but I think it's the same for any gamer that really pays attention to why a game works or doesn't and finds it hard to put up with obvious bad calls by the designer. I mean, maybe when I DO note something I find to be a design failing in a game I'm more apt to think of the designer themselves, being one myself, than before I had the job (I think people more naturally blame "the game" for being too hard/unfair, etc. whereas I default to "oh come on, dude, not cool," addressing the responsible designer in my head.) There's no REAL excuse for shipping a poor experience to the player-- if you're locked into shipping a puzzle that doesn't make sense, bandaid it with really explicit help text that gives the player the answer; if you can't get around shipping a really unfun combat encounter, just tune it to be super easy so nobody will have to play it twice, etc. But to answer your question, no, I still enjoy good games now as much as ever-- if not more, given my appreciation for how hard it is to ship something that really hits the mark.

