Famous quotes from game industry professionals?

I'm looking for quotes from known game industry professionals (designers, developers, etc.), relevant to the topic of game development.

Please one quote per answer and cite your quotes with a link to a primary source, if possible. (and a link to the person's bio wouldn't hurt).

Hopefully this will become a collection of great quotes that can be referenced (e.g. in presentations) or, in my case, possibly to write on the board at my game dev club meetings to prompt discussion.

Also please no duplicates from the Stack Overflow question "Great programming quotes".

From game development Ricket

• "Do weird and difficult things."

  -Masaya Matsuura [bio]

  -[Source] (a collection of great game design-relevant quotes)

  From Riley Adams

• Great game-play is a stream of interesting decisions the player must resolve.

  From an interview with Bruce Shelley, Age of Empires senior designer.

  Rushyo : It's amazing how often people forget this - and end up with really dull games.
  From Tetrad

• "Focus groups tell you what people like, but they don’t tell you what people want."

  -Ron Gilbert [bio]

  -[Source] (a collection of great game design-relevant quotes)

  From Riley Adams

• "What game is worth doing that’s not creatively risky?"

  -Tim Schafer [bio]

  -[Source] (a collection of great game design-relevant quotes)

  Dan Olson : Most of them...
  From Riley Adams

• Play Style Matters

  From Warren Spector of Deus EX fame and of the soon to be Epic Mickey. Is my favorite

  From Wight

• "Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important."

  From Programming God, John Carmack (Source)

  Bart van Heukelom : Sometimes it's true, but not always. You can also have a basic plot but tell it really well (like Uncharted 2) or just have a game that is all about the story (MGS4)

  Bluestone : Obviously a good story is important to drive the narrative; however if at *any* point during game development the priority of the story (or any other aspect of the game such as graphics) supersedes **FUN**, then you're in trouble... This is just my preference, but I find games that intermingle and drip-feed story elements into gameplay (such as Portal) are far more immersive than games that pull control away from the player for 30-minute cutscenes (such as MGS4). :D

  GamingHorror : that's my all-time favorite game dev quote! :)

  BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft : Right, that's why Serious Sam did better than Mass Effect -_-
  From Bluestone

• John Romero's about to make you his bitch.

  While it's not a quote of a game professional, it's definitively the star example on how to not make game PR, and how easy it is to hype expectations to a startling and spectacular failure.

  Justicle : And the tag line "Suck it down". What a fail. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romero)

  coderanger : For those that managed to miss this (and trust me, it was for the best), this was part of the marketing push for [Daikatana](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana), which is basically likely Duke Nukem Forever except it did get released and was terrible.
  From Kornel Kisielewicz

• "When it's done"

  Various. Positive example - Blizzard. Negative example - 3D Realms.

  nhnb : Blizzard being mentioned as a positive example, reminds me of this quote by the CEO Kotick: "The goal that I had [...] about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games." Creating a corporate culture of "skepticism, pessimism, and fear". (Source: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6226758.html?sid=6226758 )
  From Kornel Kisielewicz

• A game is a series of interesting choices.

  -Sid Meier [Bio]

  [Source]

  tenpn : I always thought this was Sid too, but Tetrad has a reference saying otherwise.

  Jason Kozak : The source referenced is from 1999, while the article Tetrad referenced is from 2003. Not to mention, in the context of the article Shelley which in context attributes the principle to Sid.
  From Jason Kozak

• Video Games are bad for you? That's what they said about Rock 'N' Roll.

  Shigeru Miyamoto, shame on you if you don't know him.

  [Source and more Quotes from him]

  From Ivo Wetzel

• "The only legitimate use of a computer is to play games."

  Wise words from Eujene Jarvis (Defender, Stargate, Robotron, Smash TV, etc).

  [Source]

  AttackingHobo : ...and to make them.
  From Muttley

• I've always liked this one from the foreword of the incredible book, Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar..

  "A single-player game is really a movie that you create in cooperation with the player, where the lead actor doesn't have a copy of the script."

  From Valve Front-man, Gabe Newell

  The whole book is a collection of beautiful resources and stories that detail Valve's development process.. Highly recommended to artists, designers and programmers :)

  From Bluestone