Metronom,
While I would never begin to speak for HT and company, I have flown in their sims for many years. In my experiance they do both. I have yet to see any game or sim where the creators spend as much time playing their own product as the folks at HTC do. If you see HT in the arena and he's talking in blue text, he's there to answer questions and in general to interact with his customers. If you see him talking on the open or country channel he's just flying and having fun with the rest of us.
While I haven't seen as much of them lately I'm sure that is because they are head down working on AHII.
Sharky