This question might be the anti-thesis of itself. I had a discussion with a friend who shares a different point of view than what I have learned so far. He said that I should create the game I want and not ask for any feedback. I should be designing a game for myself and not for others. There is so many people in the world, that it's unlikely I design a game that I like but nobody else does.
This view goes in contradiction with everything I learned about game design in the last 15 years. I have always been told that you don't design a game for yourself, but for your target audience. And that you should ask for feed back regularly to make sure you are going in the right direction.
The only difference I could see, is when designing a board games, most of them are going to be played with other players. Solo testing only gives you a portion of the experience therefore requiring the need to other players to play and give feed back on your game. While if you design a video game or a solo board game, the experience you get will be very similar to the final product.
Still, your experience as a designer could be biased because you know your game perfectly, which is not the case for new players that could get lost or not understand your game. It's still possible that for video or solo board games, feed back could only be required later in the game development than multiplayer games.
My friend has been mostly designing table top RPG. Since there is a game master that act as a judge, maybe the rule design must be less solid, require less testing and feedback. Board games seems at the other end of the spectrum with tight rules and design.
What are your thoughts?
Maybe I should stop spending time asking for your thoughts! I instead of reading and writing on forums, I should spend this time designing games.
That is what basically I have been doing all those years. But what If I was wrong, I should do the whole game alone and not ask for any feedback At the end and make some adjustments if necessary.
Still, I would more likely see myself doing this for a solo board game or video game because I can get the full experience. In multiplayer games, I need to play with others to get the full experience which implies collecting comments because each player had a different situation to analyse and consider.
If the game is played solo, it just 1 player's point of view.