I've noticed you spectating several high-level league matches. What is it like watching people play your creation competitively, in general?
Is it amusing? Entertaining? Fulfilling?
Do you find validation of design choices by watching some of these matches?
To me, I'm just me; when I post on the forums it feels a lot to me like it does when I post on forums where I'm no-one special. Now shift that over to watching games being played. For the most part I don't think I'm specially affected. Sure there are things I can speak up on, oh in playtest that card was different. I'm aware that people might expect me to be a better player than I am, because I'm the guy. That's a bummer, who needs that pressure.
That said, I do like seeing interesting games, cool lines of play; I don't like seeing cards I blew it on make the game worse. It's fun to see cards I blew it on by making them too weak end up doing something. For a typical game I am not thinking "look at all my mistakes," but then the powerful cards gain some finesse from the high level of play in the matches I'm likely to click on, and taking out those 12 Dominion/Intrigue cards reduced the frequency of games with lots of duds. In that last championship there was a game with Pirate Ship, Counting House, and Noble Brigand, but there was a lot going on in the remaining cards.
Probably when an expansion is new I feel more like, this is my thing, please like it guys, I hope I didn't blow it. But later that pressure is off.
I'm probably overstating this due to wanting to feel like I'm not stuck-up or something; some cognitive bias, we can work out which one later. Probably I've to some degree watched games just because I'm the guy. Maybe in a sideways sense of, like, this isn't as much of a waste of time as it would be if it were some other game, because hey I'm the guy. Or the expected background idea of wanting to feel good about making a game that people are playing.
But then, I've watched a bunch of Super Mario Odyssey videos, and I'm clearly no-one there, just a guy who wants to see cool stuff in a game he likes.
Spectating Dominion is greatly enhanced by being able to chat with the other spectators. It's way more fun than watching the videos. I do watch some of the videos, but tend to skip a lot, trying to just see, how did they open, how did things develop, how did it end, without seeing every decision being considered. But when you're spectating, you can talk about the decisions, spot things they didn't, listen to Stef spot things they didn't, or you know, talk about something else even.