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The other day a friend commented to me "I wish game developers were more candid about development." He was surprised when I said we are. The caveat is that we're only candid with other industry people. Because gamer culture is so toxic that being candid in public is dangerous. See that recent twitter thread about game design tricks to make games better -- filled with gamers "angry" about "being lied to."Game Designer Says Developers Would Be More Candid If Gamer Culture Wasn't So Toxic
Forums and comment sections are full of dunning-kruger specialists who are just waiting for any reason to descend on actual developers. See any thread where some Franz Ferdinand comments how "easy" it would be to, say, add multiplayer or change engines. Any dev who talks candidly about the difficulty of something like that just triggers a wave of people questioning their entire resumé. "Questioning" here being an absurd euphemism for "becoming a target of an entire faction of gamers for harassment or worse."
There are still topics I can't touch because I was candid once and it resulted in dumb headlines, misunderstandings, and harassment. So while I'd talk candidly about certain big topics right now -- I know doing so would lead to another wave of assholes throwing shame at me. (And of course I face almost nothing compared to women/PoC/lgtbq+ folk)