&gt; I tend to justify things (whether rational or not) as a content problem (&quot;Oh I can just build this system and it will make making this type of content so much easier!&quot;).<p>That can also be a trap (one that I myself am particularly prone to given how much I love roguelikes and tool-building). When it comes to games, I&#x27;m just not wired right to enjoy hand-authoring content. So when I do game-like stuff, I tend to lean towards procedural generation because it lets me avoid that unpleasant task.<p>But, I&#x27;ve learned, painfully, time and time again, that that tends to be <i>way</i> harder than hand-authoring. It kind of makes sense. If hand-drawing a fun level is difficult for me to do, why should it be easier for me to write a program than can author a million of them? In some sense, the latter must be strictly harder since it is a superset of hand-authoring a few one-off things.<p>Tool-building does matter, of course. But sometimes you just gotta make some stuff.<p>Another option is to push it onto the player: make the gameplay itself creative. That can work (SimCity), but it can also fizzle out (Spore).<p>The problem there is similar, I think. With hand-authored content, you have to come up with a narrative path or maybe a tree through the possible game space that&#x27;s fun to play. With player-authored content, the <i>entire play space</i> has to be fun. Otherwise they&#x27;ll be able to make anything, but most of the stuff they make won&#x27;t be <i>fun</i> to make.