Q: People have said that Fantasy Flight has previously brought out games (Warcraft, Doom) without thoroughly playtesting them and have used expansions to fix the potential problems with the game. Do you think this is a fair or unjustified assessment?

A: I would actually not agree with that. There have been instances where we have brought out a game that didn’t exactly match up with what the gaming public anticipated they would do, but we by no means think that they’re “broken.” However, those criticisms seem to have mostly died out recently, I’d say due in no small part to our intensive playtest program headed up by Mike Zebrowski. We by no means have stopped internal playtesting—I’ve been playing StarCraft and Tide of Iron in the office for many many months prior to release—but we now have a network of playtesters around the world that is totally separate from the company. That benefits us by them having to read and understand the rulebook themselves rather than having the rules explained to them by the game developers, as well as giving us a fresh, “unmarried” perspective on new titles.