My conclusion is that different people take different things from games, so the idea of making a "perfect" game or even an "ideal" game is nonsense. It's the s

My conclusion is that different people take different things from games, so the idea of making a "perfect" game or even an "ideal" game is nonsense. It's the same premise as "There's no such thing as an average pilot"[0]. So, how do you make a game that's just "good"? Not "good for some players", but just "good"? Logically, the only way to do this is to make the game customizable and configurable, so that every player can choose to make the game their own perfect game. This isn't possible, so the next best thing is to make a game that is perfect for some people, and the ideal is to have a wide variety of different kinds of games. I'll also note that having every game configurable would be a downfall as well. A big part of connecting to other people over a game is knowing that you played the same game. If everybody tweaks every game to their liking (or in some future we just use AI to generate our perfect games), then we lose the ability to connect meaningfully to one another over shared experiences. So love what you love about games. Don't let anybody tell you that you're wrong, as long as you accept that what you love about games is wrong for very many other people as well. Personally, I love a good story, but it's entirely secondary to gameplay for me. If a game is mediocre with a good story, I simply can not play it. I'd rather read a good book, because I've never played a game with a story as good as most books, movies, or even TV shows that I've enjoyed. If I'm ranking quality of story out of all stories I've experienced, the top video game probably comes quite far down on the list, beyond 30 or 40 books, movies, and shows. [0]: https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/when-u-s-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages/article_e3231734-e5da-5bf5-9496-a34e52d60bd9.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/when-u-s-air-force-disc...