Obviously, THEY don't think it's crap. They designed it, so it has to be good. And with that mindset, they look past all the flaws and see what they want to see. (For the record, this goes for pretty much every developer.) A few will sometimes step back and get a 3rd party's input on how it really is. Otherwise, things like play control are written off as "we're not as good of gamers", graphical jaggies are ignored for the "look at the detailing on this", and story hiccups are glossed over as "well, they know what we mean."
Occasionally, you'll have the game that is instead rushed by the publisher, so they will see some of the flaws in it. And that's the worst case of all- it harms the developer's reputation for putting out a sub-par game, and even they consider it to be so. But many times, they still expect it to sell like gangbusters. I find it interesting how all the crap games this gen are finally starting to weed out the crap developers; costs are high enough (especially on HD) that it's bankrupting some.
-dunno001
-On a quest for the truly perfect game; I don't think it exists...
