There’s no such thing as the perfect novel. Perfection in art is unequivocally subjective. What one reader hails as perfection, another will throw across the room in disgust. As readers, our preferred reading experiences span the gamut from cuddly, reaffirming romances to gritty, life-challenging noir. And that’s awesome. A world without variety would leave authors with very little of interest to write about.
Because the perfect novel will never exist, authors have lots of room in which to play around and find their niches. Therefore the question isn’t so much “how to write the perfect novel” as it is “how to write your perfect novel”.

– K.M. Weiland

There is no such thing as a perfect game. No matter what genre, what theme, what mechanics you choose to limit yourself to, there is no such thing as a perfect game. No matter how good your game is there will always be someone who doesn’t like it, someone who thinks it’s stupid, or slow, or boring or just plain bad.

This is great news.

Because if there is no such thing as a perfect game there is no such thing as a universally terrible game. No matter what weird mixture of genre, theme and mechanics you choose to brew, someone will always find it fun, challenging and inspiring. Someone will always be willing to play it. There is no such thing as a universally terrible game.

Your job as a designer isn’t to create the perfect game. Your job is to create a game you are satisfied with and then find the audience who likes it. Just don’t expect anyone to like it. And don’t expect anyone to hate it. (more…)