Someone at every game design company should have a full-time job of saying, “Why aren’t we letting the player decide that?” . . . When [designers] let . . . unnecessary limitations creep into a game, gamewrights reveal that they don’t yet understand their own art. They’ve chosen to work with the most liberating of media- and yet they snatch back with their left hand the freedom they offered us with their right. Remember, gamewrights, the power and beauty of the art of gamemaking is that you and the player collaborate to create the final story. Every freedom that you can give to the player is an artistic victory. And every needless boundary in your game should feel to you like failure.

Orson Scott Card (b. 1951) American author

Compute Magazine (1991)