Game design is NOT easy, and it's just as much an art form as painting or writing music. Asking what makes a game fun is sort of like asking what makes a certa

Game design is NOT easy, and it's just as much an art form as painting or writing music. Asking what makes a game fun is sort of like asking what makes a certain song "good"; it boils down to a question of personal preference, and everyone has different tastes. You can't please everyone at once, but if you dumb down the game enough you can appeal to a very wide audience. That's what happens with formula movies, pop music, and increasingly, video games as well. Maybe the problem isn't that most game designers suck, but that the major studio's have calculated that they can be more profitable if they don't bother spending the time and money it takes to make games that are actually well designed.