Did [the first playtest] go the way you thought it would?
TL;DRRob Irving says the first board-game playtest went about as expected, with the design department as first testers, and further rounds will refine the rules incrementally.
It pretty much went the way I was expecting. We had the design department here in Austin. First victims. They're very happy to spend two hours playing a board game rather than sitting at their desk working on things. And it went pretty much as expected. As a first test, it's still working out the, okay, does this work to simulate the computer game? But in fact, as soon as we get out from here, we're going to go and do another one. Round two. And I have refined some of the rules, especially through discussion with other folks who are playing. And we'll get closer to the game, and it's incremental. We won't have a breakthrough, I wouldn't expect. But from week to week we'll get a better and better idea of how the board game works to simulate the computer game, and from that how the computer game can be made better.