If a game designer experiments too much, are they a game discoverer?

If we're defining science and experimentation as approaching game design empirically and proving/disproving hypotheses about your design - then I'd say that's definitely true

However, I think that approaching game design in either an artistic/experimental manner misses the mark. Players are fairly predictable, and I've found that what they find entertaining follows a set of rules (for example, products with "rules" relevant to a lot of people will attract a large audience). Game design then becomes a matter of putting these rules together to build a product that's as entertaining and valuable as possible, rather than seeing which designs stick through experimentation

Experimenting could find these rules, though I've found that it's more efficient to observe existing audience reactions, deduce the rules from why they're reacting the way they are, and using these as a basis for a game design before creating anything

are they, instead of "is he/she"