I find for me personally, that as soon as I start to think about the audience, who they are, what would please them, what they may like or not like, it starts to seriously impede my artistic expression and acts like a writers block. I get concerned about whether or not I’m doing the right thing, whether what I do is what people will like, etc… and this starts to change what I create. It also changes the reason for creating it, which is now to try to do what other people want and like, rather than just expressing what I feel is best (for me?) … If I can stop thinking of any audience whatsoever then this pressure is relieved and I feel free to be artistic. This is probably a common malady I guess… any thoughts? Should an audience be considered at all in game design, or does it actually get in the way of artistic expression?
The answer to this sort of question is always yes/no/maybe 
Either you make games you want to play, or you try to think up something you want as many as possible to enjoy. Sometimes both. And sometimes you just want to make what you think will earn the most money. Or a combination of everything. Everything is OK, really. If the game is too evil and IAP-laden, people will avoid it anyway.
I don’t really work with more than a general idea of what I want to make when it comes to my own projects, so mine change a lot. Then I scrap them.
tl;dr: Yes.
I always consider my audience. Having worked on other games with a similar audience makes it easier for me because I know what they want. 
I also ask potential audience members what they want. Rather than blocking me, it frees me to focus better on what will make our game appeal to the niche we are targeting. I can’t image going in cold, with no idea of who might play our game. I would be overwhelmed!
What about ‘people like me’? That’s an audience too. In which case, you’d be the judge of what works well. And even so, you have the curse of knowledge. So, you need to consider ‘How can I make this better for people like me, who aren’t me?’ That usually leads to simpler mechanics, juicier interfaces, and better feedback. There is always an audience, whether it’s your 16 year old son (my current project), the lady in line at Wal Mart, or yourself.
TL;DR - There is always an audience. Decide who it is. Consider best practices - flow, simplicity, finish.
Gigi
Hell yes.
Having written some games that have flopped, it became obvious immediately that making sure my audience is happy is “sort of” important - not only for the success of the game, or what I get out of it, but more importantly for what they get out of it. We write games for our audience, which as @Gigiwoo notes, may or may not include ourselves.
We can’t account for individual taste/expectations. We can get around this problem by noting that the audience served by a genre typically expect certain things. This is why we often write games for some combination of genres. I think Gigi’s note about ‘people like me’ as an audience is doubly astute, because if an audience excludes you, you’re probably going to write a flopper.
My example is Zombies vs. Knights, my cut-down RTS project from four years ago. First things first - I hate the twitch RTS as popularized by WarCraft III/StarCraft II; if I start talking about what’s wrong with StarCraft II in particular from my viewpoint, I won’t be able to stop, because I feel the game is systemically flawed from the ground up. I consider the game itself a game design anti-pattern. The TL;DR version is, I don’t think there’s any strategy in said games at all. My disdain for twitch RTSes was in every nook and cranny of ZvK - my ‘cutting down’ of the RTS pretty much led to units on autopilot with a single activatable ability, that the players found less than fun* and too random; it was expected that, being a strategy title, I would give the player more control so that there could be that “strategy” thing.
*: Though, judging by the numbers on Wooglie, I’m assuming that for about a year and a half, gamers found it so bad it was good-ish. But, whatever.
I think you should always have a target audience in mind and you should definitely be a part of that target audience. This doesn’t mean you can’t innovate and you have to just clone other “best of breed” games. It means you should have a feel for what you as a member of that target audience really want. Why do you like this kind of game? What have you always hated about games of this type? By asking questions such as those you put yourself in the position to be creative. You don’t even need to set out to drastically change the design (and doing so would probably be too much change anyway). Instead you can try to focus more on the things you like and why you like them and focus less on the things you do not like. Maybe it is the feeling of being in control of this unit that you really like. Okay, so can how can you extend that feeling to other things in the game? Maybe it is the accumulation of power/money/skills that you like the best. Again, how can you really bring that area out? If you like platform games but always hated the pixel perfect jumps and so forth. Lose those and find another way to provide a challenge. No game is perfect. Even the most popular games in any genre have things that at least some players will hate and they have things that at least some players will love. And there is something about that game that appeals to all of them. That is the heart of the game. That is what you need to find. But any game that has ever been created can be improved upon at least for a portion of that target market.
Does every programmer on the Barbie games also play them for other reasons than testing?
I have no idea what they do. I suppose it is very possible they may play with barbies. It is more likely they understand the core of why people want to play with barbies (maybe through focus groups) and focus on that experience. But they could all have a collection of barbies at home I suppose.
I’m saying that the people working on any game aren’t necessarily the target market. Even more true for games aimed at kids
They could be. There a lot of adults who enjoy and play with toys. And there are a lot of adults who have children so although they would not be a direct part of the target market in one sense they actually are because as parents they would be the ones likely making the purchase. They know what their kids like and do not (or should anyway). And they know what they want their kids exposed to and what they want them to not be exposed to.
I worked on a game at a AAA that had a dev team of approximately twenty. Two of them actually played the game outside of testing. It was still a good game.
Gigi
Some good points. Possibly then I have not defined/identified my audience narrowly enough, hence the inflation of pleasing everyone… and the suggestion to please people like myself/be part of the audience, that’s good too. I need to stop targetting everyone and be deliberately more narrow. It’s sort of harder I think if you’re making something somewhat outside the box or genre-spanning or artistic in general, because then it doesn’t fit inside a nice tidy compartment so easily. I guess my project is mainly puzzle-platformer (more puzzle than platform, really)… so that narrows it down some.
Largely casual audience then? Make it very shiny, full of sound and write a list of features to definitely have and stick to that list
Casual… as in iPad mainly, minimalist graphics style, cute, colorful etc
When I design games (design in my case still being more fantasy than reality at this point, but I can dream… wait) I either seek to improve a design that I enjoyed or come up with something my friends would enjoy with me. In those cases, the audience is simple. Either its anyone who enjoyed the inspiration, and those who were turned off by the flaws I try to fix, or its for my buds and I already know what they want.
If you’re going for artistic expression, it’s doubly important to consider your audience. If people can’t interpret your expression, you may as well have never attempted. Not everyone will get it, but if expression is the goal then the key is design your game so that others are experiencing what you experienced.
Maybe that’s really vague. I’ll just say yes.
Do you not think though that being an artist is partly also to do with, the raw expression of creativity, unbridled, which flies in the face of anyone’s expectations and doesn’t conform?
I don’t believe anything can avoid conforming. Everything we know is built off of previous knowledge, or is knowledge of pre-existing entities. Where the creativity comes from, is mixing influences to reveal that undiscovered (but still, pre-existing) knowledge and perspective. Creativity doesn’t exist if there are no limits. Everything becomes arbitrary and meaningless at that point.
Individual: yes
Indie / small company: yes
AAA studio: no, those talking wallets should be grateful that we’re willing to take $60 from them
As a professional? I think artistry is expressing creativity within the constraints of the project.
Gigi
This question depends on if you are making ‘art’ or a ‘game’.
By definition a game requires an audience. The audience is required to interact. The audience needs to be considered.
By comparison art can exist for its own sake.