[Kaimetsu]

I agree completely. The word 'compromise' is thrown around often, but most of the time it's completely inapplicable. Usually there just isn't any middle ground.

Bob wants to make a flight sim, Billy wants to make a beat 'em up. How can they reach an agreement? By making the game into some kind of bizarre hybrid? In doing so they sacrifice coherence - and therefore quality - purely for the sake of compromise. Consequently they cheapen the game and reduce all the members' incentives to make it.

Even if we ignore thematic differences, the fact remains that some people are just bad at designing games. Should a bad idea be incorporated for the sake of compromise?

Good game design needs creative purity, a single vision. External input is fine, but as soon as integrity is sacrificed purely to keep a developer happy, the design is corrupted.