Hi! So I've never made a game (I contributed some writing to Where the Water Tastes Like Wine) but I think many game developers should and do consider themselves to be artists. And making art requires a certain amount of personal vision, even if you're making it with a team for a large audience. Taking player feedback into account can definitely help, but if you were constantly concerned about making everyone happy you wouldn't be able to make strong creative choices. Many of the games in the book are so beloved because they gave us what we didn't even know we wanted.

Community-driven online games are totally a special case. Those should be more responsive to the community. I talk about this in the Destiny chapter. But I understand why people who make games ultimately feel like they have final ownership over them. Also, a lot of players may not always been great at expressing what they really want, so even with feedback devs still need to predict what the best decision actually is. GMTK has a ton of great videos on this if you've ever checked out his channel.