A team built a target-shooting game for families. Playtests went great, everyone was smiling. Then someone noticed that men were consistently outscoring women.
It wasn't a skill gap. It was a strategy gap. One group sprayed targets for speed. The other lined up shots for accuracy. The game only rewarded one approach, which meant it was quietly failing half its audience.
The fix was absurdly small. And it changed everything about how I think about designing systems, not just games, but any product people interact with.
I wrote about what that fix was, why most designers fall into the same trap, and what playtesting actually teaches you when you pay attention.
Read the full piece on my blog → https://itembase.dev/blog-design-for-behaviors.html
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