> I tend to justify things (whether rational or not) as a content problem ("Oh I can just build this system and it will make making this type of content so much easier!").
That can also be a trap (one that I myself am particularly prone to given how much I love roguelikes and tool-building). When it comes to games, I'm just not wired right to enjoy hand-authoring content. So when I do game-like stuff, I tend to lean towards procedural generation because it lets me avoid that unpleasant task.
But, I've learned, painfully, time and time again, that that tends to be way harder than hand-authoring. It kind of makes sense. If hand-drawing a fun level is difficult for me to do, why should it be easier for me to write a program than can author a million of them? In some sense, the latter must be strictly harder since it is a superset of hand-authoring a few one-off things.
Tool-building does matter, of course. But sometimes you just gotta make some stuff.
Another option is to push it onto the player: make the gameplay itself creative. That can work (SimCity), but it can also fizzle out (Spore).
The problem there is similar, I think. With hand-authored content, you have to come up with a narrative path or maybe a tree through the possible game space that's fun to play. With player-authored content, the entire play space has to be fun. Otherwise they'll be able to make anything, but most of the stuff they make won't be fun to make.