One of the the most common missteps is assuming other people think like you do. This manifests in mistakenly assuming they would reach the same conclusions, but also that other people have the same capabilities that you do.
I've had the dubious distinction of pitching game demos to publishers a few times in my life. A demo inherently asks the viewer to imagine something that's not there.
1/x
"Imagine this, stretched out over twelve hours!" is the best case. Most people can imagine doing the same thing they just did, but for longer.
"Imagine doing this, but with good art!" is a phrase you invoke at your own peril. Most people can imagine good graphics instead of greyboxes, but not all.
"Look at this concept, and imagine these mechanics playing out!" is simply courting disaster. A large percentage of the population evidently *cannot mentally simulate gameplay* from pictures or documents. Not even for a second.
As a game developer, you may have the ability to reason about imagined systems interacting for seconds or even minutes at end. Take a second to reflect that this is a unique capability and not something that most people possess.
Merit is associative rather than directly judged by a lot of people. You see this in all fields. "Guitar player X is up and coming; they once shared the stage with Clapton".
It's hard to make people extrapolate gameplay. On the flip side, people seem to OVER-extrapolate the capability of robots from demos. "We're doomed", say the masses, because they saw a robot breakdance on a static plane. 5/5
Michael Labbé