I'm going to shameless link to another very eloquent post on game design because I think it applies to my previous post in many ways.  Brenda Brathwaite uses an analogy from John Steinbeck, the famous author that I think embodies some of the attitude that I discussed in my previous post about user generated content (UGC).  When Steinbeck's editor tells him that his work is too long and chronologically filled with holes he responds with this assertion about the reader:

The Reader

He is so stupid you can’t trust him with an idea.
He is so clever he will catch you in the least error.
He will not buy short books.
He will not buy long books.
He is part moron, part genius and part ogre.
There is some doubt as to whether he can read.

Well, by God, Pat, he’s just like me, no stranger at all. He’ll take from my book what he can bring to it. The dull witted will get dullness and the brilliant may find things in my book I didn’t know were there.

And just as he is like me, I hope my book is enough like him that he may find in it interest and recognition and some beauty as one finds in a friend.

That applies just as well to how game developers view the players.  Even I've fallen into this trap more than a few times.  Ask any designer for any online game and he'll likely give you the same description of his game's players.  While Brenda talks about pacing and releasing a game when it's done, I took that quote from Steinbeck to be particularly important from the standpoint of the author's attitude towards his audience.  It's easy to see the editor in that quote as being today's content developers; the embodiment of the developer quality bias.  Steinbeck is the content designer that realizes his players bring just as much to the content as he does, accepts that fact and even encourages it.

Sorry Brenda for twisting your post to serve my own nefarious needs but as I read it, I felt it relevant to what I had posted earlier about story and couldn't help myself.