In an interesting article written at The Escapist, Wendy Despain (the author), discusses her experience playing video games with her nephews:

I’ve been to a lot of conference sessions talking about how to make games better than they are. I’ve read a lot of books about it and seen even more books on Amazon about it. The game industry likes to talk about this subject – a lot. And who knows? I may not have been able to identify what was annoying my little friends about these games if I hadn’t been studying the subject myself.

But I just can’t shake the feeling that all us game developers would learn these lessons better if we just sat down and played like a 3-year-old for a while. Even if we’re making games for grown-ups. As we get older we get jaded. We expect to be disappointed. We aren’t surprised by inadequacy and sloppy work. We tolerate mediocrity and even find comfort in the mistakes that have become tradition through repetition.

The whole article isn’t very long, and is very much worth the couple of minutes it will take you to read it. I can’t remember how many times I’ve thought to myself: “What we’re the developers thinking?” while playing games. The video games industry is fairly young and inexperienced compared to other entertainment industries such as Film or even Books, but that’s no excuse for some of the basic errors in judgment sprinkled all throughout even the best games.

The Escapist