Playtest Effectively Hello all, This is the second of three posts in regards to good habits to practice as a game developer. The first in this brief series was titled Focus on Completion, and can be found here . As I'm sure many of you are already aware, playtesting is, in its most basic form, the act of testing how a game plays before it is published in order to fix any flaws in a game before they become permanent. It is a key component of game development. Playtesting helps smooth out any issues with user interface. Playtesting helps find and address imbalances that you previously may have not known were there. Playtesting helps to grow a core audience for your game, people who already feel connected to and invested in your game, even before it's launched. In short, playtesting makes for a better game. There are, however, ways to go about playtesting that yield better results than others. When I began playtesting Portals: Worlds Collide , it was for the most par...