Just reflecting, for a long time I felt that you need to be hands on, to tune the game yourself. This means access to the code. But in the business world, a role similar to a games designer is a software architect. The architect designs the whole system, sometimes specifying in detail how it functions. But, it would be inefficient to write the code too. Others do that. However, when I write games, I have always coded it all myself, except utility routines. I felt it needed that, like, how could an artist delegate his painting? But, is this all true? Hmmm.
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Auteur theory.
Film is a collaborative art, but the best films are (almost) always the vision of just one individual.
It doesn’t matter how many talented people worked on Vertigo, it will always be a Hitchcock film.
The same goes for game design, although games can’t yet be taken seriously as an artform, and great designers like Molyneux or Wright still fall short of being great artists.
This gave me food for thought. It’s a battle always between the bigger output of teams, and the need for integrity in the design. It can be very difficult to communicate what are integrated game concepts and mechanics, from one person to a disparate group. – Jeez I said that in a long way, so I hope it made sense! 🙂