During the play testing of our game Spore Wars one of our testers got stuck at the moment when the character had to interact with a machine to open the way forward. The solution was right there, but not obvious. Interestingly, other people struggled to figure it out. That small encounter made me realise, "the same game can feel completely different depending on who is playing it". As a developer, we spend so much time with our game We know how the mechanic works. We know what the objective is. We know where the player is supposed to go. We know that the button in the right corner is important. The player knows none of that! And that's one of the many challenges of game development. Building something you already understand for someone who is experiencing for the first time. That is why play testing is valuable. Not only can it help to reveal bugs, it is also about discovering the gap between what the developer intends and what the player understands. Sometimes a player will miss something we thought was obvious Sometimes they will find a solution faster than intended Sometimes they will do something entirely different! Spore Wars reminded me that knowing everything doesn't mean i get to experience it the way the player does. A developer knows the game. The player has to discover it. And designing for that difference is where a lot of that real work happens.