I'm not sure HN is the place to discuss such things, and I'm not sure even that interesting – the major gripes are mostly obvious, but fundamental; eg reliance on champion-global external systems like summoner spells, runes and whatever they call their current system, which all make it extremely difficult to balance things locally. They've been consistently getting better at it. Lootboxes that is, not game design.
>find incredibly interesting on a multitude of levels are the FROM SOFTWARE games.
FROM is an interesting company, because they were never meant to be popular. They were happy wiling away in their obscurity, constantly iterating on the same niche games (King's Field, Armored Core, etc), until DeS became an accidental hit; I'm not sure the popularity was good for them – the games are misunderstood as simply "difficult" (typically compared to "arcade difficult", but they're not; they're punishing, they trick you, and require a minimal degree of patience that can be found in almost no other modern game, but they eventually push you towards success. Arcade difficult is a vastly different beast, asking for pixel-perfect input, few if any alternative strategies, repetitive play and exceptional punishment to wring those juicy quarters out of you), and that moniker apparently confused From's weaker teams, leading to the mess of DaS 2/3. Annoyingly, their Souls success seems to eaten Armored Core's lunch too.
Probably the most amazing thing about FROM is that they actually learn from their previous work. You can look at King's Field -> DaS lineage and see actual, consistent improvement. Even when they sidestep into Bloodborne and Sekiro, they manage to take lessons with them (and make new mistakes).
But yeah, the industry has its companies and its auteurs. Platinum, Grasshopper Studio, From Software, Clover, iD, Blizzard North, Sid Meier, Kojima, Carmack, Ford & Reichie, Tarn/Zach Adams, (From & Nintendo's) Miyazaki, Mikami, etc. And you'll consistently find interesting output from them, and games worth their salt (Carmack is a bit funny because he doesn't really give a shit about games, his stuff is always technically interesting, and sometimes game-interesting).
But the annoying thing is that that you can take probably 90% of games today, and find something that did the same thing better 20 years ago. Hell, I'm beginning to doubt most game designers are even aware games existed before 2000.
The only thing we're making any real progress on is graphics.. and thats just towards realism. We've lost a lot in style. I mean hell, it's difficult to find games where player interaction is even a base concept of its design, and thats the primary thing games introduce as a medium!
