Do the best game developers constantly follow feedback and listen to what the fans want, or do they just follow their own ideas and have a dogmatic stubbornness when it comes to following other's suggestions?

Neither, I think: I imagine that effective design involves not only listening to feedback, but also evaluating that feedback, choosing what of it to take on and what to discard.

Hard to answer. If you talk about developers, my preferred rule of thumb is:

1. You have incredible large amount of cash available => do it like blizzard.

2. You have large amount of cash available => do it like valve.

3. You have no money available => be yourself and listen to yourself in the first place !

Feedback is important, but you need to filter it. As game designer you need to consider each feature in the context of the whole game, whereas feedback often consider only single, contextless features.

Questions like that can only be answered with "it depends". Why do you want to know such thing? You think that by doing what "the best game developers" do you'll be a better developer?

Don't mean to be rude, but if your plan is just following one path "because that's what the best do" you'll probably fail. Do it the way you want. You'd like to have feedback to adapt your game? Then analize feedback and try to improve it. You have an idea and don't care about users feedback? That's also OK, do the game you want. It also depends in lots of factors, it's really different if you work for a company, even if you're the game designer you won't get the last word, there are business decisions to be made to that affects gameplay.

Feedback might not be considered to change a game, but can be considered when creating the next one, so it's not like you either expect or ignore feedback, there are more options.

Also, would really like to know what you mean with "best game developres". Big companies? Or how they do it technically? Or just gameplay? Or based on success? Or only AAA games? There's no universal definition of "the best game developers", so maybe being more specfic can lead to different answers.

@Diego - I've given up using emotional attachment in my game development. I am now just in it to do what seems logical. I'm not going to listen to feedback if nobody else does - because then I'd just be doing it just to be liked, not successful. If on the other hand I must listen to feedback, then I'm going to be right there with it. Sorry if my answer seems stone-cold.

Some devs are more community-oriented, but it always requires a base vision in the first place because people won't know what they want until they get it.

I think it's good to start from your original idea, something you "enforce", and evolve it based on feedback that is in-line with what you believe makes sense and is an acceptable compromise for you.

@Diego - I've given up using emotional attachment in my game development. I am now just in it to do what seems logical. I'm not going to listen to feedback if nobody else does - because then I'd just be doing it just to be liked, not successful. If on the other hand I must listen to feedback, then I'm going to be right there with it. Sorry if my answer seems stone-cold.

No problem, I didn't think it was cold and I don't see it as a good or bad thing either. What I meant was that you can't find a list of things that work and a list of things that don't work to be successfull. You can't be better by just checking items in a list, if it where that simple everyone would be successfull (for you're last post I guess that's what you meant with "the best game developers"). Also, don't asume that there's just logic behind all this. Look at Candy Crush Saga from King... I'm pretty sure no one knew that game would be such a success. Even more extreme, look at Flappy Birds, I can't see any logic behind it's success and a lot of people tried to explain how that happened, but again, couldn't came up with a magic formula, or we would be full of Flappy birds successfull clones in every platform instead of the ridiculous amount of poor clones in mobile and web.

I am now just in it to do what seems logical. I'm not going to listen to feedback if nobody else does ...

If logic is important, then I note that basing a decision on what the majority does (or does not do) is, I believe, argumentum ad populum ("appeal to the people"), which is a fallacy in formal logic. (put another way, the majority can be wrong.)

From a production and long-term perspective, listening is important. Providing feedback on positive things is important, as is being careful not to feed the trolls; you get more of whatever you reward.

Some things are particularly important and noteworthy, such as defects in your systems. ALWAYS respond to those.

Some things you hear back are very useful to you. Not just "it looks good" but "here is something valuable to the dev team", or "here is a workaround to a big problem". If you have a large enough collection of goods, especially if you have a community that embraces "gifting" of digital goods, rewarding particularly useful feedback could include things like single-use product keys. You can make the reward public, like "Thanks so-and-so for the insights. I'm sending you a code for a widgetobject DLC and also talking with the dev team about your idea."

Some things the fans want are good, others not so much. Sometimes they will submit ideas you already have in progress. Sometimes they will want things, like "It is October, can you release a Zombie Apocalypse theme?" and you might put it on the back burner for next year's September update, and also put on the discussion list for a Christmas theme, an Easter theme, a St Patricks Day theme, etc. Other times you can discard the ideas as crazy talk.

Some things are nice to hear, such as positive feedback. Pass the best of these on to everyone in the team.

Some things are honest criticisms. Read them. Sometimes you will want to take them under advisement, other times you will disagree, other times you will accept them and make corresponding changes.

Some things are trolls or spout hurtful things, learn to ignore them. Don't respond to them, don't engage them. Be careful about banning or hiding their information as that could come back to haunt you.

Some things you WANT a few people to complain about, and need to balance the level of complaints versus the number of compliments versus your actual reward, such as complaints about pricing, complaints about ads. For example, if you are not getting any complaints at all about your pricing it is a sign you probably should consider increasing it.

So yes, it is important for somebody to follow the feedback. Whoever that person is needs to have a very thick skin, but also have enough power to elicit change, including submitting bug reports and building on future designs.

Tangentially related, here's a saying about writers: "There are two important things every novelist needs to learn. The first is how to accept criticism. And the second is how to ignore criticism."