I think you're misunderstanding the point I was trying to make. Probably because I suck at English(German here) and sometimes use the direct translation so it doesn't make much sense anymore.

Good game design is not an opinion, it is a fact.

From what I understand, games are about creating (more or less) unique experiences to the player. And the kind of experience you want to create can greatly alter the type that determines "good" and "bad" design.

So coming from that, whether or not something is good design depends on the type of experience you want to create and the (future) player's perspective.

You don't have to like the games to dissect it and see it has a great design to it.

I never disagreed. I think you're interpreting too much into my point.

Designing a casual game that brings in sales from kids and housewives is just completely different from designing a hardcore RTS catered to eSports fans. And good design choices in one game aren't automatically good in the other.

It's like someone saying World of Warcraft is a bad game.

How so?

Just because any designer worth his salt can jump right in and quickly see why people like it- even if he himself doesn't.

You could still argue that World of Warcraft has design flaws depending on the type of experience you want to create.

While there is no industry standard on what game design is, that is mostly because there is a lot of misunderstanding as to what game design means.

Mostly because no one has defined "the" single definition of game design. Hence this misunderstanding.

At least with level design, there is an industry standard that actually makes sense. Many people don't even know the difference between a "designer" and a "developer". They think that by being a game developer, they can use the synonym 'game designer' as their title. And that is just facepalm worthy.

What kind of level design standard is there? I'd argue that if you're talking about levels in specific genres, that might be true, but I can still find examples where in the same genre, 2 levels have very different rules when it comes to level design.