The Zachtronics podcast
interviewed Chris Crawford. It was an interesting listen because I didn't expect his voice to sound like that and he talks for a while about early game dev on the Atari and Mac.
He's also...less impressive than I thought? He started the GDC and is often mentioned by prominent game developers, but he's mostly known for early war games and a lot of essays. I had assumed that he was somehow part of some game or other that I liked.
He also says that if a play test reveals something about the game design you hadn't thought about, then you have failed to think it through enough. OK, well, I don't think I'll ever be a perfect mental modeler of reality, so I'll have to live with that.