…also, totally what playtesting incorrectly can teach you. Last time I tested Verba, I played with my wife. It was her first time playing Verba; she had a vague idea of how it worked from tolerating me raving about it all the time, but her knowledge wasn’t as intimate as mine. When spending a lot of time calculating probabilities and doing solo testing, you start to take things for granted. You know how far you can push mechanics, and thus tweak the numbers to reflect his rulebending. In reality, it can be a lot different.

A really interesting challenge, that I think a lot of games don’t handle well, is the idea of the expert vs the beginner. A good gateway game levels the playing field enough where the beginner can still enjoy playing against the expert, but two experts playing don’t feel like the whole game boils down to luck. This is surprisingly challenging. Things I thought would be obvious plays turned out to be not as obvious as I had hoped in practice; this led to an imbalanced game between the expert and the novice. While I want to be fair to my wife and say she played better than I expected, she also didn’t make some decisions that I thought would be clearly better choices.

Co-operative or progression based games  don’t have to suffer this as much. If you’re an MMO, it is much easier to gauge the average skill level of all your level 20 players. However, card games will ideally generate buzz that makes people want to introduce their friends. Keeping the game interesting for these new players will lead to a larger player base and added sales, both of which are important for continuing to produce the games you want. Letting the novice stand a fighting chance, but not making the game frustratingly random to the expert, is a delicate balance that takes multiple playtests to achieve.