Playing to win

[bhodi]

Has anyone read this?

[Raguel]

I haven't read it, but Ubiq wrote something better imo. I'll have to find it.

[stray]

Been around for awhile. Good stuff. I don't want to see anyone apply it to catassing though.

[Kail]

That kind of annoyed me.  This really jumped out at me, regarding exploits and bugs:

If an expert does anything he can to win, then does he exploit bugs in the game? The answer is a resounding yes…but not all bugs.... (snip) there is a limit. There is a point when the bug becomes too much. In tournaments, bugs that turn the game off, or freeze it indefinitely, or remove one of the characters from the playfield permanently are banned. Bugs so extreme that they stop gameplay are considered unfair even by non-scrubs. As are techniques that can only be performed on, say, the one player side of the game. There are a few esoteric tricks in various fighting games that are side dependant—that can’t be performed on the 2nd player side, for example.

So, scrubs suck at Street Fighter because they limit themselves with rules, while TRUE H4RDC0R3 playerz will use every possible move to win, regardless of how "cheap" it is.... except, of course, for when the hardcore player thinks a move is cheap, then whoa, you'd better not use it, because that would be unfair!

So Casual Bob is playing Hardcore Jimmy, and Jimmy kicks Bob's ass by using moves that Bob considers cheap.  Well, it's Bob's fault for not being flexible, not playing to win.  But then Sue comes in, playing as Akuma, and kicks the shit out of Jimmy.  Well, that's because Sue is a cheating bastard, because she doesn't play by the same rules as Jimmy!  Congratulations, Jimmy, you're the greatest player in the world according to your own standards. Forgive me if I don't bow.

[stray]

There's a difference between exploiting a tactic and exploiting a bug.

[edit] Revised to one sentence.

[Kail]

Everyone agrees that Akuma is off limits. There are actual bugs involved. That's the difference.

I don't see it.  I'm SURE I can find someone, somewhere, who thinks Akuma should be playable in tournaments, but a lot of people disagree.  Same thing with bugs.  Some bugs are okay to exploit (he mentions some in the article) some are not, according to him.  How he draw this distinction?  It seems to be based on the opinions of people running tournaments.  Great, if you're in a tournament or something, play by the rules or get disqualified.  But what's to stop someone from making a tournament where throwing is against the rules?  And why would I, who don't play in any tournaments, give a crap about any tournament rules?  In short, why does he seem to be implying that abusing the game rules to this particular extent is better than abusing them a little more or a little less?

The problem I'm seeing here is that the author is saying that playing to win is good and what he (the author) does, and that scrubs suck because they're limiting themselves to moves that they don't consider cheap.  Then he says that all players should be limited to moves that HE doesn't consider cheap.  I missed the part where he explained why his opinion is more valid than the casual player he just beat or the cheater who just beat him.

[stray]

Everyone agrees that Akuma is off limits. There are actual bugs involved. That's the difference.

I don't see it.  I'm SURE I can find someone, somewhere, who thinks Akuma should be playable in tournaments, but a lot of people disagree.  Same thing with bugs. 

Everyone would play him now. It was only one, old version of SF (I think it just was one) where he was considered a problem.

[Margalis]

It is a pretty arbitrary distinction.

A good player does EVERYTHING to win! (Except for these 5 things!)

The general consensus in the Street Fighter community is bugs are ok unless they really fuck things up like freeze the game. Secret characters are also often not playable in tournaments because they generally are purposely not well-balanced.

Anyway a lot of Sirlin's stuff is good. I actually find his "Playing to Win" stuff the weakest of his writing. His stuff on game balance, Yomi level 3, single player game design, etc, are all much better. It's kind of strange because he even has his "Playing to Win" book and those are the articles people pay the most attention to, but those are actually his worst articles.

I suggest people read his site because it has a lot of good stuff on it. Stay away from his blog though, it mostly sucks. (He's obsessed with WoW now for some reason and its rotting his brain)

I met him a couple of times and talked casually with him about projects he was working on in the past. Right now he's the director of the Capcom Classics series I think...

[Raguel]

I found the article I was looking for, but it's not something ubiq came up with, rather it's something he found:

http://www.zenofdesign.com/?p=542

    * Johnny:Player driven to make the most creative decks with the wackiest combos possible. Roughly equivalent to a Bartle’s Explorer.
    * Spike: Highly competitive player, determined to win at all costs - will play low cost, ‘boring’ decks that still manage to win most of the time simply by playing the percentages. Roughly equivalent to a Bartle’s Killer, perhaps Achiever.
    * Timmy: Player wow’d by the big monsters and big effects that often are impossible to bring out in practice. Roughly equivalent to all those guys who buy MMOs based on pretty screenshots.


Of course, the interesting thing about Mark’s article is noting how the different players innately have different resistances to losing. Johnny is there to pull off the impossible combo. He know’s it’s impossible, but if he manages to pull it off once and win one game out of ten, he’ll be happy. Timmy just wants to bring his big bruising monster out. If he can get it out occasionally and win 3 times out of ten, he’ll by happy. By comparison, Spike is so competitive that he’ll get mad if he doesn’t win pretty much every time.

IMO that comes closer to describing what's really going on. We all play to win but we also play to have fun and for some (like myself) a fun playstyle may not be conducive to winning (I suppose I'm a "Johnny").

[geldonyetich]

Has anyone read this?

Playing to improve yourself through the challenges set up in the game? 
Good.

Playing to relax and enjoy yourself?
Good.

Playing to "win" through the arbitrary achievement constructs assembled within a crappy artificial world that serves as a backdrop of a game that offers little challenge or enjoyment? 
Delusional.  Hooked.  Fished in.  A single-minded road to mindlessness.  (And the developers that assembled such a monstrocity aren't free of blame either.)

A nice article on the mindset of the hardcore though.

[stray]

I just don't see it as "hardcore" at all. Repeatedly using a simple attack in SF, for example, is not hardcore. It is, as stated earlier, just exploiting your opponent's weaknesses. Just because they haven't found a counter to what you're doing doesn't make it your fault. That's retarded.
 
Nor is it cheap. The point of Street Fighter is not to beat your opponent in the most creative ways possible -- It's much simpler than that. The point is just to get their health bar down before they do that to you. You can very well be put in a situation where you do, in fact, have to be "creative" -- But if you don't have to, then what's the point?

It's the same thing as Kareem's skyhook, or Jordan's fade away shot. If you can do something like that, then there's no reason to change your strategy. In basketball, two points is two points. Doesn't matter wtf the shot looks like.

[geldonyetich]

I'd absolve the players in game like Street Fighter from having a problem with playing to win.  It's the typical treadmill where playing to win strikes me as delusional.

[stray]

Well, that I agree on. Treadmills aren't even games to begin with.

[damijin]

Between Playing to Win and his "Warcraft is Teaching the Wrong Things" article, I have come to pretty much hate David Sirlin's opinions. They come across as largely based on what is best for himself, like how he thinks that WoW should be a fun game for everyone (or at least himself), simply because a lot of people play it. Bullet-proof argument there.

[Strazos]

Sounds like quite the douchebag. As such, I cannot be bothered to read the drivel. 

[Margalis]

Like I said, a lot of his stuff is good. Just ignore the playing to win stuff and the WoW stuff.

All his WoW writing is basically a rationalization for spending tons of time on a game he knows sucks.

[pxib]

This one is the one to read, IMHO. Everything else get a little tired.

[Telemediocrity]

I felt WoW sucked too, but most of his reasons made little sense to me - he seemed to read Raph's theory of fun in very narrow terms.  This part jumped out at me as very true, though:

These examples go on and on, but the basic idea here is that Blizzard treats the players like little children who need a babysitter. There are mountains of rules in the terms of service that tell you that you shouldn't do things that you totally can do in the game if you want. Why they don't just alter their design and code so you can't do these things is beyond me. But this mentality is drilled into the players to the point that they start believing that it's ok. They start believing that it's not ok to experiment, to try out anything the game allows in a non-threatening environment. Well—that's a dangerous thing. That's the point at which the game stops being "fun" by Raph Koster's definition, and it's also the point at which the game can no longer teach. The power of games is that they empower a player to try all the possibilities that he can think of that the game rules allow, not that they have pages of "rules of conduct" that prevent you from creative thinking.

Feeling like you can transcend the game's mechanics in a way that wasn't one of the preconceived, intended way to play is really, really cool.

But yeah - the main thing that strikes me about the Gamasutra is that he can't conceive of someone having fun in a game without being catass about it in some way; he just wants his catassery to be a bit more meritocratic.

Did it ever occur to him that the complaints about "cheapness" are really more about people who don't expect to win, but would at least like to lose in a way that's fun.  Getting your ass kicked stylishly is more fun than a guy re-dizzying you 20 times in Street Fighter.

[stray]

Like to lose in a way that's fun.

What is that to me really? I don't agree with everything Sirlin talks about, but it's this particular aspect that I do. If a guy, for example, thinks it'd be fun if everyone only used pistols in BF2, what is that to me? That's not the game, "fun" or not.

I mean, more power to him if he wants to impose that limitation on himself, but I'll go on shooting him down with a shotgun or tank. That's what that stuff is there for. I'll reserve my pistol when my primary weapon is spent -- Because that's the role pistols generally play in Battlefield.

Same thing goes for any move in Street Fighter. Complaining about "cheapness" there is just as retarded as the example above. Don't call me cheap for not conforming to some bullshit rule that no one knows about but you. Fuck you and your need for stylish deaths.


People who take the time to complain when they lose like that are going to complain when they lose anyhow. Doesn't matter if they die gloriously or not. This is more about the fact that some people are just bitches than it is about "playing to win".

[Telemediocrity]

What is that to me really? I don't agree with everything Sirlin talks about, but it's this particular aspect that I do. If a guy, for example, thinks it'd be fun if everyone only used pistols in BF2, what is that to me? That's not the game, "fun" or not. ...


Same thing goes for any move in Street Fighter. Complaining about "cheapness" there is just as retarded as the example above. Don't call me cheap for not conforming to some bullshit rule that no one knows about but you. Fuck you and your need for stylish deaths.

Well, in large part it's a matter of game design.

But in an arcade, when you're up close and personal with someone, there's a bit more of the social contract-y stuff involved.  If a guy's whupping your ass in Street Fighter by just using the same move over and over, it's not entirely unreasonable to ask him to whup your ass in a more entertaining fashion.

Generally, rule one of playing video games with people who can see and touch you in RL is "Make the people around you happy".  If you're awesome at a game and the other guy asks you to go a bit easy on him because he's new - well, why not?  Generally, a quarter is all that's at stake.

We all play Street Fighter (well, most of us) for the same reason - to have fun.  If making some allowances for the guy next to you at the arcade booth allows him to have more fun and not walk away from his ass-kicking feeling dejected, well, make some allowances.  When dealing with real, flesh-and-blood human beings, "Fuck them" should not be the first phrase that enters your mind.

Side note. That was one thing Killer Instinct did well, despite being an abomination of a game; when an expert utterly destroyed you, you got a pretty good show out of it. SuperultramegaegotasticalemmanuelkantesquesupercalifragilisticespialidociousCOMBOOOOOO!

[stray]

[edit]

Fuck off, Mediocre.

[Hoax]

rofl

This article makes sense on some levels but not on others.  With arcades you can tell if it is time to play for fun or play to win really quick.  But not every session is a tournament or should be treated as one.  Really this article would be much better off being written about CStrike or some other fps.  The arbitrary things people cry about in most fps games are just scrub whining by his own definition.  When I play SC:III I only take Nightmare if I've been loosing because he is by far my best character.  I dont use him all the time because, that is boring and when I'm on with him I can combo out a whole lifebar without my friend even getting control of his character.  That isn't cool, it isn't fun and its pretty hard to counter (dont let me land the dash opener).  Some CS servers tell people not to awp camp, hell I remember servers that basically told people to not play smart (strategy wise).

Here is another good example of non-scrub arbitrary rulings.  With Madden '05 running with the QB was overpowered, I mean really overpowered.  DB/LB's do not react until the QB is almost 7 yards past the line of scrimmage.  You could gain a first down most plays even if your running with Drew fucking Bledsoe.  So yeah we could have all fucking run QB's all day, forced other players to play dime every down then taken a team with a power runner and smashed it up the gut or something.  But instead it was agreed if you aren't a team with a real running QB you shouldn't run with your QB if not flushed out of the pocket by pressure.  Made the game more enjoyable, did not make everyone involved a scrub.

I think a more accurate definition of a scrub would be someone who refuses to acknowledge the existence of the metagame.  They pick a style of play that they like and say everyone should do things that way.  Even as the game evolves over time they refuse to adapt.  Instead they cry about all the new cheap tricks people use.  In online games these are the fuckwads who are always advocating for stupid shit, like WoW mages having invis and shit.

[Telemediocrity]

Okay, one other thing that bugs me:  "Yomi" doesn't really mean "To know the mind of your enemy" in Japanese.

Yomi is just the stem form of "Yomu", "to read".  There's a particularly archaic kanji that you can use to have it mean "read between the lines", but that's the closest I can get.  If you walk up to a Japanese person and say "I've been applying the Japanese concept of 'yomi' to videogames", I'm reasonably certain they will have absolutely no idea WTF you're talking about.

I agree that it's his best article, even if it's been written before in some form by pretty much every guru of a competitive activity.  But the whole "Let's wrap it in a veneer of Eastern Cool" thing is a pet peeve of mine.

[Calantus]

We all play Street Fighter (well, most of us) for the same reason - to have fun.  If making some allowances for the guy next to you at the arcade booth allows him to have more fun and not walk away from his ass-kicking feeling dejected, well, make some allowances.  When dealing with real, flesh-and-blood human beings, "Fuck them" should not be the first phrase that enters your mind.

And if you enjoy playing to win it's you that's the asshole when you refuse to play by someone else's rule on what's fun? Please. A lot of you guys have a real problem with vilifying a side and not seeing it both ways. Now me I really could not care less about playing to win in a fighting game, I go there, press some buttons and try to pull off a few combos or specials. If I run into a combo thats really powerful I wont bother using except to get me out of a bind as it would bore me otherwise. I want to win, sure, but I'd rather just mess about even if it means risking a loss. But if some guy thrashes me with some cheap combo over and over I'm just gonna not play him 'cause it's not my place to tell him what he should find fun.

[Telemediocrity]

And if you enjoy playing to win it's you that's the asshole when you refuse to play by someone else's rule on what's fun? Please.

Uh, yeah.  The golden rule is generally "go with what the other guy finds fun".  And if that's in direct conflict with what you find fun, then the backup rule is "Let whoever's more of a newbie have their way."  Courtesy to amateurs is a pretty consistent aspect of most competitive activities.

If you're a pro basketball player, and you're playing 1 on 1 pickup versus some random scrub, and he gets dejected if you just And-1 his ass the entire time, you stop using the And-1 moves and go a bit light on him.

[Rithrin]

And if you enjoy playing to win it's you that's the asshole when you refuse to play by someone else's rule on what's fun? Please.

Uh, yeah.  The golden rule is generally "go with what the other guy finds fun".  And if that's in direct conflict with what you find fun, then the backup rule is "Let whoever's more of a newbie have their way."  Courtesy to amateurs is a pretty consistent aspect of most competitive activities.

If you're a pro basketball player, and you're playing 1 on 1 pickup versus some random scrub, and he gets dejected if you just And-1 his ass the entire time, you stop using the And-1 moves and go a bit light on him.

I think this mainly works with direct "playgroups" of friends. If I live in some small town and only know, say, four people that are any good at this certain game, I'm sure as hell not going to stomp all over them even if I'm that good as they'll stop playing against me. On the other hand, when I'm at college or some other place in an arcade I'm going to be looking for challenges, which means not going easy on the random strangers. As well if I'm not great at the game I don't want people going easy on me (I know some friends that rock me in Soul Calibur 2/3) because then I learn to combat them. I believe stuff like this was covered in the Playing To Win article, though...

[Righ]

Playing to win, no matter the means only works in anonymous online environments, because elsewhere people learn not to play against folk who wont enter into the social contract of consensual enjoyment. Now, as UO has demonstrated, there are even cases when enough people playing to win without regard to others can undermine even the anonymous online environment.

[Telemediocrity]

As well if I'm not great at the game I don't want people going easy on me (I know some friends that rock me in Soul Calibur 2/3) because then I learn to combat them. I believe stuff like this was covered in the Playing To Win article, though...

Most people aren't playing to eventually learn how to win - they're dropping a few quarters into a game they'll likely never play again.  If anything, your way of doing things, the "don't go easy on me because that's how I'll learn to pwn" way, is what's better suited to a small group of friends, who know you and know you want to eventually get good.  That's far removed from the experience of the average arcade player, which is a kid with a couple quarters and maybe a notion that tapping down-downright-right-punch will produce a fireball of some sort.

[Rithrin]

Most people aren't playing to eventually learn how to win - they're dropping a few quarters into a game they'll likely never play again.  If anything, your way of doing things, the "don't go easy on me because that's how I'll learn to pwn" way, is what's better suited to a small group of friends, who know you and know you want to eventually get good.  That's far removed from the experience of the average arcade player, which is a kid with a couple quarters and maybe a notion that tapping down-downright-right-punch will produce a fireball of some sort.

Perhaps this shows just how wrong the article can be, as when I'm playing with my friends we tend to use characters we either suck with or that are just considered janky all together (such as random customize battles in SC3) to have fun. Then again, depends on the people, as if someone starts doing the "undefeatable" thing with us there are members of my group that will get bad blood right away rather than take it as a learning experience. I'd say this is because if someone is undefeatable in our group we will have to deal with it every time we play the game, and if they're in an arcade playing an undefeatable stranger then they can just wait 'till he's done playing and we'll never have to deal with him again.

Edit: I also agree that getting owned every time is not fun. But this just means that if I go into an arcade and see a King of Fighters machine, with someone playing it wearing a King of Fighters jacket, hat, with a KoF character name tatooed on his arm, I will plunk in a quarter or two, not go in with some innane expectation that he is going to go easy on me just because he's never seen me play before. In fact, I'm going to expect him to do his worst (as well as anyone else I see playing one of these games that I challenge) because if he doesn't, its a waste of all the time he's probably put into the game. And if I don't want to deal with getting owned hard every time, I simply won't challenge him over and over again.

[Megrim]

I suppose that there is a lot to be said about this topic, but i find it's always easier to keep things short and simple;

In basketball, two points is two points. Doesn't matter wtf the shot looks like.

 

[Telemediocrity]

In fact, I'm going to expect him to do his worst (as well as anyone else I see playing one of these games that I challenge) because if he doesn't, its a waste of all the time he's probably put into the game.

How would that be a waste?  He put the time into the game because the game was fun; if he was playing a game that wasn't fun just so he could get good and dominate other players, isn't that kind of fucked up?

[Kitsune]

Back in Natural Selection, there was a pretty beefy critter that the alien team could morph into, called fades.  Many players were afraid of the fades and considered them a 'game over' sign if the humans hadn't yet gained powered armor, and several people went on the forums there to complain about the fades and request that they be nerfed.

I grabbed a friend, did some research, then went on the forums and posted, 'Look, it takes under two clips of ammo to kill a fade.  If you people would just quit running away and screaming about how the game is over and just SHOOT THE GOD DAMNED FADE, it would die and you could win the game.  You'd probably die in the process too, but the fade is more costly than a human grunt, so you'd be ahead in the exchange.'

Some jackass came into the thread and posted what was basically that article, about how not exploiting the game makes you a loser, and how being a winner means stomping the newbies into the dirt with your uber leet skillz.  He posted it in support of my statement, and seemed surprised when I called him a jackass for it.

People shouldn't whine about being up against bad odds in a game.  They should shut the hell up and try to rise to the challenge, because you'll never overcome it if you just give up and bitch on a forum.  If they're newbies, if they haven't learned the game, then there's no time like the present to start learning, and the ass-beating the other jackass is administering to them is an educational opportunity.

On the other hand, people shouldn't be assholes.  Don't cheat, don't gank the newbies, don't ambush funerals and weddings and post the recording to whatever shitty 'new rock' song you think is cool.  If you're better than they are, you deserve to win, but don't be a fuckhead about it.  Give them a /salute, drop a few pointers about how they can improve, and go on your way.  Exploiting bugs to crush some poor schmuck who's just minding his own business doesn't make you a winner, it makes you an asshole who has failed at life in exchange for victory in a video game.  Not a good trade.

[Rithrin]

How would that be a waste?  He put the time into the game because the game was fun; if he was playing a game that wasn't fun just so he could get good and dominate other players, isn't that kind of fucked up?

Well, I certainly don't play games that I don't find fun. And I wouldn't expect others to. I'm also not sure what this my post, unless we had a misscomminication here. I'm not telling people to go play games they hate so they can dominate others. I'm just saying that if you've played for a really long time and you're good at the game, why would you purposely play like it was your first time every time someone popped a quarter in to play against you? Now if they *ask* me to go easy on them, I can respect that since I'm not an ass. However if you keep popping quarters in getting stomped every time and never say a word about it, I'm going to assume you're cool with it.