Topic: how can game designers not have time to play games?

This thing just boggles me. So developers like Masahiro Sakurai don't have time to play games but yet Shigeru Miyamoto gets the time to play? How is that even understandable? So like the reason we get poor quality games nearly half the time is because the devs don't play games but make them? Its like saying that if you want to be a story writer, you should write your own stories and not read books.

Somebody like Sakurai gets absorbed into his work. If you read any of his interviews, he talks about how he spends days at a time working as he tends to do most things himself. Miyamoto, on the other hand, takes more of a hands-off approach, thus he has time to spend pursuing non work-related activities, like playing games. It's just a difference in people. There are those in any field who have no time due to their work ethic.

Anybody with a fulltime job and adult responsibilities most likely doesn't have a lot of time for playing games. Not to mention game designers are always having to meet strict deadlines so they are usually working day and night trying to finish their games.

When you're the one making the games, playing games becomes one of those "uuugggggghhhhhh" things.

Miyamoto actually said he's moving on to smaller projects these days, so...less work for him compared to Sakurai.

Because Sakurai lacks what Miyamoto has - management skills. Miyamoto does it right - he sees a clear picture of the game made and at the same time lets the team work on it, not stay at night because he doesn't trust anyone.
When you do everything when you have competent team, then why do you even need them? Let them do their work and don't push it. Then you can have complete game, not make people wait another half a year for features that should be on launch.

Game design is a long process of analyzing every small detail of the mechanics and creating documentation clearly explaining what needs to happen. When you go home a lot of time the last thing you want to do is play games. To relax, you don't want look at more game mechanics or would you rather spend time with your wife (or whoever) and watch a movie or something? Miyamoto is in a more supervisor role and Sakurai seems to love being in the trenches more, doing the actual work himself. That is why Miyamoto is able to work on so many more projects that Sakurai. While it is important for Designers to play games, it is also important for Designers to have real world experience.

This. Sakurai doesn't seem to trust his employees very much and prefers to do everything himself, which is unhealthy but that's the way he is.