He gets people nodding along by saying "most stuff sucks". But the absence of examples is intentional. Because while most people will nod along to "most stuff sucks", they do not all agree on what sucks. And that goes for music, games, films, books -- essentially all arts and culture.
Until he actually defines what is and is not good design, he hasn't actually made a point that can even be evaluated.
The bit about the career path is somewhere between ad hominem and red herring. The path is irrelevant to the results. If bad designers are getting through, it'd be due a failure of the filter between level/encounter designer and lead designer. Not a product of whether the level/encounter designer came from QA or development or ops or whatever else.
There's also no way for us to evaluate how much a given 'bad design' was a function of 'no effective training' as opposed to 'time crunch', 'no resources', 'dictate from management', 'tech limitation', or even 'novel theory that just didn't pan out'. And absent that, how could we lay the blame at the feet of career path?
Did you miss the part where we don't all agree on what it is that actually sucks?
When I say "most people think most things suck, but they don't agree on what sucks" - that applies to industry people too. And nothing about their being industry people means they magically all agree on what, in particular, sucks nor in what the non-sucky alternative would be.
My pointing out Garriott's fallacy doesn't advance the conversation but your repeating it does?
One last time: Garriott's statement is uselessly vague. If we ask people "do most designers suck" we will be lumping together the affirmative answers of those who think (e.g.) Halo's designers suck alongside those who think they do not.
So both groups agreeing to the over-broad phrasing "most designers suck" gives us only the illusion of consensus.
So as long as Garriott avoids defining "what sucks" and "what does not suck", he is not saying anything true or worthwhile.
No, you don't need to define what sucks. Most people agree that most game designers suck. Most people agree that getting punched in the face sucks. This is not a difficult concept, and trying to pretend the point is "uselessly vague" simply because you don't like it is absolutely useless.
I'd have thought not, but you seem impervious to it.
Your consensus includes people who disagree on what sucks. How in the world can you pretend their seeming agreement on a broad phrasing remotely matters?
8 out of 10 people might says shooters suck, but if 4 think health packs are the problem and 4 think auto-regen health is the problem and health packs are the solution, they do not agree. The 8 out of 10 number is useless in deciding not only which is the design that sucks and need to change, but in deciding how to change it to not suck.
Saying "most people think most design sucks" is at the level of abstraction of "most people think most human interaction sucks". "getting punched in the face" is a specific, defined human interaction. If you or Garriott wanted to specify an example design at that level of specificity, we could evaluate it.
Until he actually defines what is and is not good design, he hasn't actually made a point that can even be evaluated.
The bit about the career path is somewhere between ad hominem and red herring. The path is irrelevant to the results. If bad designers are getting through, it'd be due a failure of the filter between level/encounter designer and lead designer. Not a product of whether the level/encounter designer came from QA or development or ops or whatever else.
There's also no way for us to evaluate how much a given 'bad design' was a function of 'no effective training' as opposed to 'time crunch', 'no resources', 'dictate from management', 'tech limitation', or even 'novel theory that just didn't pan out'. And absent that, how could we lay the blame at the feet of career path?