I hadn’t caught up fully when I made that post, so I hadn’t seen
post #104 yet, but I would contrast my position with the one expressed that post. I don’t think there is a reliable process for producing good games like there is for chairs (though considering people still make terrible office chairs, maybe there’s not one for those either). Otherwise, everyone would be producing good games all the time.
Thats because unlike more classical art forms, we don't have centuries of extensive and exhaustive study behind it.
Game design as a serious avenue of study is may be less than 50 years old, if that.
And besides that, unlike say Music or Cooking, where there is a performative element inherent to their consumption, games are closer to paintings or even creative writing, in that it isn't strictly important that repetitive replication is possible. Obviously corporations ruin everything and will force that repetition, but that has nothing to do with whether something is an art or not.
Like a painting or poem, a game doesn't have to be an immaculate example of some standard of game design. It just has to appeal to the person who consumes it, and even then. These are all things that can just exist as the expression of the artist, no matter how people feel about it.
For example one of my favorite games is Solomons Boneyard, which is a neat little timewaster Mobile game. There isn't anything about it on a design level thats really worth noting on its own, but as a designed experience its fantastically fun and addictive in a healthy way, and for the game's relatively small audience it just ticks all the right buttons in the brain to be endlessly satisfying to play.
When you get swarmed by 50k jumping demons that explode into 5 more, and then again into 5 more when you destroy them, its this hectic crazy thing and depending on your build, you can just sit there and hold that entire onslaught back as your killcount starts screaming upwards.
Sooooo satisfying and its beautifully elegant in how the game's design conspires to result in that.