Playing to Win, Part 1
SirlinI wrote this article many years ago. It was so widely quoted and valuable to so many that I spent two years writing the book Playing to Win. The book is far more polished than these articles, better organized, and covers many, many additional topics not found on my site. If you have any interest in the process of self-improvement through competitive games, the book will serve you better than the articles.
Playing to Win, Part 1
Playing to win is the most important and most widely misunderstood concept in all of competitive games. The sad irony is that those who do not already understand the implications I'm about to spell out will probably not believe them to be true at all. In fact, if I were to send this article back in time to my earlier self, even I would not believe it. Apparently, these concepts are something one must come to learn through experience, though I hope at least some of you will take my word for it.
Introducing...the Scrub
In the world of Street Fighter competition, there is a word for players who aren't good: "scrub." Everyone begins as a scrub---it takes time to learn the game to get to a point where you know what you're doing. There is the mistaken notion, though, that by merely continuing to play or "learn" the game, that one can become a top player. In reality, the "scrub" has many more mental obstacles to overcome than anything actually going on during the game. The scrub has lost the game even before it starts. He's lost the game before he's chosen his character. He's lost the game even before the decision of which game is to be played has been made. His problem? He does not play to win.
;)
Historical Scrub: Neville Chamberlain. He didn't even try to win, instead offering "appeasement" to Hitler. (Caution: not serious historical commentary.)The scrub would take great issue with this statement for he usually believes that he is playing to win, but he is bound up by an intricate construct of fictitious rules that prevent him from ever truly competing. These made-up rules vary from game to game, of course, but their character remains constant. In Street Fighter, for example, the scrub labels a wide variety of tactics and situations "cheap." So-called "cheapness" is truly the mantra of the scrub. Performing a throw on someone often called cheap. A throw is a special kind of move that grabs an opponent and damages him, even when the opponent is defending against all other kinds of attacks. The entire purpose of the throw is to be able to damage an opponent who sits and blocks and doesn't attack. As far as the game is concerned, throwing is an integral part of the design--it's meant to be there--yet the scrub has constructed his own set of principles in his mind that state he should be totally impervious to all attacks while blocking. The scrub thinks of blocking as a kind of magic shield which will protect him indefinitely. Why? Exploring the reasoning is futile since the notion is ridiculous from the start.
You're not going to see a classic scrub throw his opponent 5 times in a row. But why not? What if doing so is strategically the sequence of moves that optimize his chances of winning? Here we've encountered our first clash: the scrub is only willing to play to win within his own made-up mental set of rules. These rules can be staggeringly arbitrary. If you beat a scrub by throwing projectile attacks at him, keeping your distance and preventing him from getting near you...that's cheap. If you throw him repeatedly, that's cheap, too. We've covered that one. If you sit in block for 50 seconds doing no moves, that's cheap. Nearly anything you do that ends up making you win is a prime candidate for being called cheap.
Doing one move or sequence over and over and over is another great way to get called cheap. This goes right to the heart of the matter: why can the scrub not defeat something so obvious and telegraphed as a single move done over and over? Is he such a poor player that he can't counter that move? And if the move is, for whatever reason, extremely difficult to counter, then wouldn't I be a fool for not using that move? The first step in becoming a top player is the realization that playing to win means doing whatever most increases your chances of winning. The game knows no rules of "honor" or of "cheapness." The game only knows winning and losing.
A common call of the scrub is to cry that the kind of play in which ones tries to win at all costs is "boring" or "not fun." Let's consider two groups of players: a group of good players and a group of scrubs. The scrubs will play "for fun" and not explore the extremities of the game. They won't find the most effective tactics and abuse them mercilessly. The good players will. The good players will find incredibly overpowering tactics and patterns. As they play the game more, they'll be forced to find counters to those tactics. The vast majority of tactics that at first appear unbeatable end up having counters, though they are often quite esoteric and difficult to discover. The counter tactic prevents the first player from doing the tactic, but the first player can then use a counter to the counter. The second player is now afraid to use his counter and he's again vulnerable to the original overpowering tactic. (See my article on Yomi layer 3 for much more on that.)
Notice that the good players are reaching higher and higher levels of play. They found the "cheap stuff" and abused it. They know how to stop the cheap stuff. They know how to stop the other guy from stopping it so they can keep doing it. And as is quite common in competitive games, many new tactics will later be discovered that make the original cheap tactic look wholesome and fair. Often in fighting games, one character will have something so good it's unfair. Fine, let him have that. As time goes on, it will be discovered that other characters have even more powerful and unfair tactics. Each player will attempt to steer the game in the direction of his own advantages, much how grandmaster chess players attempt to steer opponents into situations in which their opponents are weak.
;)
Historical Scrubs: The British Redcoats. The ultimate example of being too bound up by rules to actually fight. They fought "honorably" in a row. (Caution: not serious historical commentary.). Let's return to the group of scrubs. They don't know the first thing about all the depth I've been talking about. Their argument is basically that ignorantly mashing buttons with little regard to actual strategy is more "fun." Superficially, their argument does at least look true, since often their games will be more "wet and wild" than games between the experts, which are usually more controlled and refined. But any close examination will reveal that the experts are having a great deal of fun on a higher level than the scrub can even imagine. Throwing together some circus act of a win isn't nearly as satisfying as reading your opponent's mind to such a degree that you can counter his ever move, even his every counter.
Can you imagine what will happen when the two groups of players meet? The experts will absolutely destroy the scrubs with any number of tactics they've either never seen, or never been truly forced to counter. This is because the scrubs have not been playing the same game. The experts were playing the actual game while the scrubs were playing their own homemade variant with restricting, unwritten rules.
The scrub has still more crutches. He talks a great deal about "skill" and how he has skill whereas other players--very much including the ones who beat him flat out--do not have skill. The confusion here is what "skill" actually is. In Street Fighter, scrubs often cling to combos as a measure of skill. A combo is sequence of moves that are unblockable if the first move hits. Combos can be very elaborate and very difficult to pull off. But single moves can also take "skill," according to the scrub. The "dragon punch" or "uppercut" in Street Fighter is performed by holding the joystick toward the opponent, then down, then diagonally down and toward as the player presses a punch button. This movement must be completed within a fraction of a second, and though there is leeway, it must be executed fairly accurately. Ask any scrub and they will tell you that a dragon punch is a "skill move." Just last week I played a scrub who was actually quite good. That is, he knew the rules of the game well, he knew the character matchups well, and he knew what to do in most situations. But his web of mental rules kept him from truly playing to win. He cried cheap as I beat him with "no skill moves" while he performed many difficult dragon punches. He cried cheap when I threw him 5 times in a row asking, "is that all you know how to do? throw?" I gave him the best advice he could ever hear. I told him, "Play to win, not to do ˜difficult moves.'" This was a big moment in that scrub's life. He could either write his losses off and continue living in his mental prison, or analyze why he lost, shed his rules, and reach the next level of play.
I've never been to a tournament where there was a prize for the winner and another prize for the player who did many difficult moves. I've also never seen a prize for a player who played "in an innovative way." Many scrubs have strong ties to "innovation." They say "that guy didn't do anything new, so he is no good." Or "person x invented that technique and person y just stole it." Well, person y might be 100 times better than person x, but that doesn't seem to matter. When person y wins the tournament and person x is a forgotten footnote, what will the scrub say? That person y has "no skill" of course.
Depth in Games
Scrub of the Future: Captain Kathryn Janeway. Voyager would have been home ages ago if it weren't for her silly rules. (Caution: Voyager is a bad show.)
I've talked about how the expert player is not bound by rules of "honor" or "cheapness" and simply plays to maximize his chances of winning. When he plays against other such players, "game theory" emerges. If the game is a good one, it will become deeper and deeper and more strategic. Poorly designed games will become shallower and shallower. This is the difference between a game that lasts years (StarCraft, Street Fighter) versus one that quickly becomes boring (I won't name any names). The point is that if a game becomes "no fun" at high levels of play, then it's the game's fault, not the player's. Unfortunately, a game becoming less fun because it's poorly designed and you just losing because you're a scrub kind of look alike. You'll have to play some top players and do some soul searching to decide which is which. But if it really is the game's fault, there are plenty of other games that are excellent at a high level of play. For games that truly aren't good at a high level, the only winning move is not to play.
Boundaries of Playing to Win
There is a gray area here I feel I should point out. 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. There is a large class of bugs in video games that players don't even view as bugs. In Marvel vs. Capcom 2, for example, Iceman can launch his opponent into the air, follow him, do a few hits, then combo into his super move. During the super move he falls down below his opponent, so only about half of his super will connect. The Iceman player can use a trick, though. Just before doing the super, he can do another move, an icebeam, and cancel that move into the super. There's a bug here which causes Iceman to fall during his super at the much slower rate of his icebeam. The player actually cancels the icebeam as soon as possible--optimally as soon as 1/60th of a second after it begins. The whole point is to make Iceman fall slower during his super so he gets more hits. Is it a bug? I'm sure it is. It looks like a programming oversight to me. Would an expert player use this? Of course.
The iceman example is relatively tame. In Street Fighter Alpha2, there's a bug in which you can land the most powerful move in the game (a Custom Combo or "CC") on the opponent, even when he should be able to block it. A bug? Yes. Does it help you win? Yes. This technique became the dominant tactic of the game. The gameplay evolved around this, play went on, new strategies were developed. Those who cried cheap were simply left behind to play their own homemade version of the game with made-up rules. The one we all played had unblockable CCs, and it went on to be a great game.
But 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 player-1 side of the game. Tricks in fighting games that are side-dependent (that is, they can only be performed by the 2nd player or only by the first player) are sometimes not allowed in tournaments simply because both players don't have equal access to the trick--not because the tricks are too powerful.
Here's an example that shows what kind of power level is past the limit even of Playing to Win. Many versions of Street Fighter have secret characters that are only accessible through a code. Sometimes these characters are good, sometimes they're not. Occasionally, the secret characters are the best in the game, as in Marvel vs. Capcom. Big deal. That's the way that game is. Live with it. But the first version of Street Fighter to ever have a secret character was Super Turbo Street Fighter with its untouchably good Akuma. Most characters in that game cannot beat Akuma. I don't mean it's a tough match--I mean they cannot ever, ever, ever, ever win. Akuma is "broken" in that his air fireball move is something the game simply wasn't designed to handle. He's miles above the other characters, and is therefore banned in all US tournaments. But every game has a "best character" and those characters are never banned. They're just part of the game...except in Super Turbo. It's extreme examples like this that even amongst the top players, and even something that isn't a bug, but was put in on purpose by the game designers, the community as a whole has unanimously decided to make the rule: "don't play Akuma in serious matches."
Sometimes players from other gaming communities don't understand the Akuma example. "Would not a truly committed player play Akuma anyway?" they ask. Akuma is a boss character, never meant to be played on even ground with the other characters. He's only accessible via an annoying, long code. Akuma is not like a tower in an RTS that is accidentally too powerful or a gun in an FPS that does too much damage. Akuma is a god-mode that can't coexist with the rest of the game. In this extreme case, the community's only choices were to ban or to abandon the game because of a secret character that takes really long to even select. They chose to ban the secret character and play the remaining good game. If you are playing to win, you should play the game everyone else is playing, not the home-made Akuma vs. Akuma game that no one plays.
My Attitude and Adenosine Triphosphate
I've been talking down to the scrub a lot in this article. I'd like to say for the record that I'm not calling the scrub stupid, nor did I even coin that term in the first place. I'm not saying he can never improve. I am saying that he's naive and that he'll be trapped in scrubdom, whether he realizes it or not, as long as he chooses to live in the mental construct of rules he himself constructed. Is it harsh to call scrubs naive? After all, the vast majority of the world is scrubs. I'd say by the definition I've classified 99.9% of the world's population as scrubs. Seriously. All that means is that 99.9% of the world doesn't know what it's like to play competitive games on a high level. It means that they are naive of these concepts. I really have no trouble saying that since we're talking about experience-driven knowledge here that most people on Earth happen not to have. I also know that 99.9% of the world (including me) doesn't know how the citric acid cycle and cellular respiration create approximately 30 ATP molecules per cycle. It's specialized knowledge of which I am unaware, just as many are unaware of competitive games.
;)
Not everyone has to know every subject. This chart is for biologists and Playing to Win is for those who want to win tournaments.
In the end, playing to win ends up accomplishing much more than just winning. Playing to win is how one improves. Continuous self-improvement is what all of this is really about, anyway. I submit that ultimate goal of the "playing to win" mindset is ironically not just to win...but to improve. So practice, improve, play with discipline, and Play to Win.
--Sirlin
Reader Comments (308)
"All is fair in love and war."
I read this article many years ago and just looked it up to see if it still existed. I now realize that it had quite an influence on me, especially in overcoming the emotional reaction to cheesy (but viable) tactics, keeping a cool head and looking for the correct counter instead. I'd like to say thanks for boiling down these ideas so nicely.
PS: This superficial discussion about an example, namely Akuma, makes me sad. It's an obvious point and people should appreciate the full scope of the article instead of obsessing over this stupid detail...
Thanks Soot, it looks like you got out of it exactly what was intended. And that's great you didn't get hung up on a superficial detail. ;)
I think it would help a lot of you weren't so abrasive/blunt in your comments :) (opening with lines like "I'm sorry to hear that your understanding of the subject is so weak.", "Your claims are completely wrong again.", etc.).
I think i agree with what you're trying to say. Not how you said it, mind you, but what you're actually saying. Take the zerg rush in Starcraft. Well-executed, low level players will be flattened by it time and time again. They don't have the knowledge and/or skill to properly defend and come back from one.
But high level players will not only properly defend against it, but quickly crush you since you're now pretty far behind economically. This effectively converts starcraft into a very shallow "win at 6 minutes or lose at ~9" game. From my understanding of the article, this is the sort of thing that's an exception.
Er, what? Lots of people who have posted here really do have a very weak understanding of the subject, and make crazy and offensive claims. It's perfectly fine to call out their craziness.
Problem with Zerg rush: none. It's not really an exception to anything, in that it's legal, and fine to do in tournaments. Banning it is not warranted nor feasible. It may or may not be smart to actually do if you're playing to win though.
...
it's pretty much the EXACT SAME THING as Akuma, with the difference being that pro players can counter it (and pretty much get a free win from doing so). In any case it reduces depth of the metagame, which to my understanding is the whole point of banning something. There was a point where Akuma wasn't banned, no?
No, it's not the same thing at all, not even close or similar. In one case, the thing in question is feasible to ban (can be completely isolated and removed) and is warranted to ban (entire community of players and tournaments agrees, always agreed, and not-banning removes all gameplay). In the other case it is not feasible to ban (can't really even define exactly what it is, and really artificial if you try) and it's not warranted (player community and tournaments wouldn't even consider banning it).
If you're in doubt you can watch ANY starcraft tournament and notice that it is not overrun by all-in Zerg rushes. They are very rare, so pretty much the opposite of something so powerful that it prevents all other moves. Are you...not aware of starcraft tournaments or something? I mean, this is miles and miles apart, so I'm pretty confused how you are even comparing them. Akuma means there is no game except Akuma, and that even then it's degenerate with stuff like 100% lockdowns. Zerg rush means...you are playing regular starcraft with a million possible strategies and a vibrant tournament scene.
I don't see your article mentioning feasibility of banning anywhere. And i also explain why it's not currently banned: it leads to an easy/free win for the player being zerg rushed. It's so effective in lower brackets though (might as well be an akuma for them) that I personally think that the game should be tweaked to remove it or make it a lot more difficult to do. Any previous statements regarding me wanting to ban it were, uh, me missing that fact ^^
All of this was beside the point i was originally trying to make though (which you somehow missed in my two previous posts), which is: As far as i understand, you're saying that the only things that can be considered "cheap" are exploits/characters/units/etc. that reduce metagame depth at a tournament level.
I won't touch the issue (much) of whether a similar setup is reasonable to apply on a more casual level, but suffice it to say that I also believe that if you have more fun playing with a "mental web of rules", then more power to ya. Games, after all, were originally created to have fun. The word you're looking for to describe an activity where winning is the ultimate pursuit is sport :)
http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/what-should-be-banned.html
RE: RCIX
Sirlin is absolutely right here, the "zerg rush" as you call it, isn't "too good", and it certainly doesn't dominate the game, otherwise we'd be seeing nothing but Zerg v Zerg games in tournaments, with both zerg doing your so-called "zerg rush" every game.
That NEVER happens, not in ANY tournament EVER.
If a lower-skilled player isn't able to beat such an attack, then that player needs to improve his play and figure out how to beat it (guess what? All 3 races have multiple ways of beating it).
Also there's the matter of discreteness. You don't even offer up a complete definition of your "zerg rush". How would you ban something like this? Ban 4pool? 5pool? 6pool? Where would you draw the line?
Saying that your alleged "zerg rush" is "pretty much the EXACT SAME THING as Akuma" is completely laughable, and shows you have a very weak understanding of the subject (or an unbelievably poor understanding of professional Starcraft). One is a viable and legitimate tactic, the other is a god-mode character that would completely dominate the game.
Use some common sense here. Starcraft is a national sport in Korea. There are teams of people who make a living off of playing Starcraft. To say the least, Starcraft is quite mature in Korea, having been played professionally for a decade. Don't you think if some kind of "zerg rush" was too powerful, something would have already been done about it?
The spawning pool originally cost 100 minerals in unpatched SC1, instead of 200, which would seem to put it into the stupidly broken category (which is why it got "banned" through a patch). In fact, that may be where the whole "zerg rush" meme that's in people's minds comes from. I'm not all that familiar with the game's history, though.
Also, "civilized people looking like jerks" seems like a common pattern for really long-running discussions. With the point having been explained in excruciating detail, all the good counter-arguments have already been brought up, and only the poor ones remain. Having to keep shooting those down over and over again would get annoying after less than two years, I'd imagine. Instead of going "More like David SURLYn, amirite?", maybe people should think twice before reposting literally the hundredth variant of the "you're a scrub for not using Akuma/stabbing the other guy in the eye during a match" argument.
pkt-zero- in early versions of Starcraft, the spawning pool was 150 minerals (not 100 like you claim), and the hatch was 400 minerals. At first, it wasn't clear exactly how some of Zerg's mechanics worked (the saviOr/ZerO style huge macro Zerg was how the devs expected the race to be played; however, the July/Jaedong style "rush zerg" wound up becoming more popular and powerful in Brood War), so it wasn't obvious why the prices on their buildings should be any different than for the other races.
pkt-zer0, the spawning pool originally costed 150 minerals, not 100. (I actually played that version before it was patched.) (Yes I am that old - 34 years.)
So why add the Akuma example to the article anyway?
As I understand it from the comment replies it boils down to "Don't use Akuma in tournaments because he is banned by the tournament organizers". But that has nothing to do with "playing to win" but more with "don't get disqualified". If the organizer says "no throws" you have, in order to be allowed to play/win, abide the rule and don't use throws. No matter what you think of this rule either you follow it or you don't play at all.
But in case the tournament organizers don't ban Akuma everyone playing to win must/should take him. Not taking Akuma in this case would be a scrub move. That he "ruins the game" is a subjective issue akin to "playing for fun".
Or do I miss some grand revelations only real pros are able to see?
Banning or not banning Akuma is not something players decide, but tournament organizers. And they do not "organize to win", but "organize to make money/attract people" which operates under different rules. But if a player does not take Akuma even when he is allowed to he makes up a rule for himself which reduces his chance to win which means he is a scrub. Correct?
Reader, as I have said many times over, leaving out the Akuma example would give less information to the reader in a bad way. Is it true that you use ANYTHING to win? No, it's not. You use any tournament legal means to win. Akuma is a great example of a thing you would not practice if you were playing win because it's not tournament legal, and shouldn't be. This is a stark contrast from say, a sniper rifle that is merely "extremely good." Your understanding of the subject would be worse off if you thought sniper rilfes and akumas were the same sort of thing.
For more information on what should be banned: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/what-should-be-banned.html
The reason the Akuma argument persists is because Sirlin writes the start of the article from the position that the game is right, and if you believe the game is wrong then it's because you are a scrub and do not understand the game at a high level of play. I understand why it's written in that way, and since the site focuses heavily on SF and SC it's a pretty good mantra, but it doesn't really apply to games in general. Sirlin's perspective is that of a competitive player of arcade games that remain static for years at a time, while also thankfully working very well at the highest levels of play. It's from that perspective he makes the black and white statement that a game is either good at the highest level of play, or is not, and if it is not then "the only winning move is not to play".
However, out of the box SS2T is not a good game at the highest level of play.... because it would devolve into Akuma vs Akuma lockdowns. It's through a community determined rule that the game is improved and becomes the excellent competitive game that has been played for many years. The truth is, these things are not black and white. In the same way that the very obvious decision to ban akuma improves SS2T, it is also possible to improve many different games to varying degrees by changing the game in less dramatic ways, either by discrete and enforcable rules agreed on by a community, or by hard changes to the gameplay through patching or server side variables set by admins or tourney organisers. Many modern games can be tweaked in this fashion, we're no longer stuck with the unchangable arcade version of a game for years at a time, and it's silly to pretend that games are perfect and cannot be improved upon with gameplay tweaks.
The reason the article doesn't go into this heavily is because it's supposed to be about the mindset of players who have not fully explored the depths of a game, and are making poor judgements about elements of the game that they have not learnt to deal with. Discussing actual genuine cases of gameplay being improved at the highest level by changing or removing things from the game detracts from the original point, and people could jump on this as false validation of their scrubby opinion on throws, or using projectiles and keeping distance, So as soon you chuck the Akuma example in there, people want to know what the difference is between banning Akuma, and banning the Railgun in Q3, because the Railgun is totally lame dude.
The difference is not because Akuma requires a secret code to select, it's not 'because Sirlin says so', it's not because such and such tourney bans Akuma and tourneys are always right. The difference is that removing Akuma from competitive play absolutely unquestionably improves the game at the highest level of play, and removing the rail doesn't. How do you know if a particular rule change will really improve a game sufficiently to make the change worthwhile? Honestly: 99.9% of the time you don't. Akuma is the 0.01% of the time when it's blindingly obvious. The rest of the time, you have to accept that understanding the mechanics of any complicated game to the degree required to divine how the game will look far into the future of top level play, and also understand how minute changes will effect that gameplay is practically impossible. Not even the developers of games that have been played competitively for several years will really grasp the mechanics to such a degree, SF and SC play is evolving right now at the top level. So when you think it's lame for zerg to be able to rush you at the start of a match and believe that removing that ability would be a really good idea, chances are you're not a magical super genius who has sussed the entire complexity of SC strategy and seen a better future and a brighter tommorow for the playerbase. Chances are you're just a scrub, and you should play the game some more.
TeoH, your comment violently agrees with everything I said, but claims disagreement. For the hundredth time, having an example of something that is over line is more helpful than no examples. Pretending there is no such line would be wrong and misleading because readers might think bugs that crash the game and Akumas are "playing to win," when they are not. Also, this has zero to do with fixed games vs games that can be updated. Every single point made applies to both.
Also minor point, but "out of the box" ST didn't really have Akuma. More than a year of tournaments took place before he was even known. From the perspective of players, he was a cheat code added to the game after it was already established. Not that that matters.
Question to readers in two parts:
1) I propose no further comments on this article can be worthwhile. They are full of the same weird and wrong stuff over and over. Shouldn't no new comments be approved? Or...
2) The overall quality of comments to the article is so low that it can be improved by deleting all comments and starting over, with extremely high standards of moderation on comments. (People can have all the free speech they want to post crazy things in the forums though).
Agree / disagree?
No i'm not in disagreement, i'm not sure where you read that. I'm just trying to highlight the difference in perspective that's causing people to argue with you about it, and how the way you've constructed the article creates this missunderstanding. Everything about the mindset of playing to win is valid and a great read, but in additional the article effectively states 'It is never a good idea to alter gameplay, unless it's to ban Akuma'. So you've got people arguing over why you make a special exception and how you draw the line. The decision of when to interfer with game rules and start changing or banning things hinges on knowing that the change will be beneficial to gameplay, and that's something that's very difficult to know.
I get why you've included the example, i also get why you've not gone into a discussion of how games can be improved and balanced, because that's not what you wanted to talk about. It's about how a player should approach a game in order to succeed at tourneys and enjoy the highest level of play. Inevitably though, when you're discussing 'house rules', and banning of things in tournaments, you're kicking up the discussion of if/when game rules should be changed. It's a different discussion that comes from the perspective of the designer more than the player, but it's that angle that we're dealing with when we talk about banning Akuma. The 'player' in everyone should be concerned purely with using whatever is available to them to win at the game. It's the designer that looks at how to make the game work as well as possible in a competitive environment, but 'designer' in this case can be tournament organisers, the community at large or a server operator, anyone in a position to determine rules.
Akuma is banned because it's the sensible design decision to remove him from the game, it improves gameplay. Players in general shouldn't worry about those decisions, they are generally very difficult decisions to make, and most players are crappy designers. So... i agree with you, i'm just trying to say that the Akuma argument is part of a different discussion, and the reason it seems to stick out of the article like a sore thumb is because the article isn't conerned with that side of the discussion. You just added it as an example. Sorry if it wasn't clear but the post was aimed at the people critisizing the Akuma exception.
This is a good read and will definetly tell all the scrubs i play about this article.
This was also a very nostalgic article and reminds of my childhood playing SSF2 for the genesis. Back in my hay day i couldnt do any of the direction inputs that well. I wasn't good at charge characters either. So I played e honda and just mashed the punch buttons and slapped my friend to a wall and did the throw hug if he just sat there. I would win, suprisingly, and all my friends would tell me "that's cheap" and I have no skill. Well I knew I didn't have any skill but I didn't think it was broken or anything. All my friends played ryu and they would always TRY to throw fireballs that end up being fierce punches yet Mark would claim he was still better than me although I won. Looking back at this I realize how ridiculous some people are. Funny good times for sure :)
Well now i am proficient at street fighter and enjoyed your hd remix version of SSF2T. I feel the ps3 version is a bit laggy compared to my friend's 360 but it can just be my TV
Great article!
There's a difference between the statement, "That is unbeatable" coming from a place of ignorance, and the statement, "That is unbeatable" coming as the result of a peer-reviewed meta analysis.
This is so spot on. I never understood the allure of competitive gaming or the mindset of the competitive gamer until a little over a year ago when a friend opened me up to the joys of competitive N64 Super Smash Bros., a game which, when I had last touched it over a decade ago during my childhood, had been simply an inane passtime. Myself and several of my roommate began playing for hours on end, bettering ourselves against one another, devising and looking up strategies, marveling at videos of isai playing pikachu (or any character for that matter) competitively on youtube. "Tryin' to Smash?" quickly become the standard greeting in our house as we constantly vied for super smash supremacy; even when we were piss ass drunk, had girlfriends over, or had to go to be at class in 2 minutes, when the tiny N64 power light came on, the competitive spirit was everywhere. The emphasis truly was on improvement as well as winning as you state; in fact I find it hard to separate the two, as they really tend to be products of one another. It's amazing how competitive gaming reveals the intensely strategic and multifaceted natures of seemingly simple games like Super Smash Bros. Gaming serves as an interface for human interaction inherits the depth and complexity thereof.
I just want to say I know the citric acid cycle and and the step that leads to it, glycolysis, and the step that follows, oxidative phosphorylation, and all of their mechanics. I am not a biologist, but I am elated that I lived to see it mentioned by a non-biologist in the real world :)
First to commence, really nice read. I personally just started down a road to a competitive mindset myself. Having been a scrub for some time( I was your arctypical anti-metagame kid) I can relate to a lot of what you've said. Even with my limited understanding of competitive gaming though I completely understand your employing of the case of Akuma as a benchmark for what constitutes a reasonable ban. This is most likely due to my games of choice being games in which bans of things that are "in the game for all to use" are perfectly normal and acceptable.
What most of those arguing your akuma point seem to fail to grasp, in my honest opinion, is that the supposed "arbitrary line" governing what is and isn't allowed wasn't invented by you but was instead a unanimous decision made by not two or three individuals but by an entire player base. To me it makes sense. If I was to liken it to something that applies to me I would say it is akin to the establishing of Advanced and Traditional distinctions in the Yu-gi-oh TCG or to the seperation of tiers in Pokemon. I'm sure most people would consider these soft examples on the grounds that these are games aimed at children, to which I say look at the ESRB rating on your game of choice and tell me how many of them have M's. Back to my point, in the Yu-gi-oh TCG it was found that several cards released in the earlier days of the game gave essentially an unfair advantage to the ones using them.
"Oh no, someone has an unfair advantage, poor baby" yes, I saw a lot of this reading through the comments, but when the advantage is to a point where the game ceases to be fun or stagnates to the point where matches came down to a coinflip then there is serious grounds for a ban. Those claiming that both players can simply use Akuma don't understand that doing so create a gamestate where using anything other than Akuma is unreasonable, that is to say you auto lose if you are not using Akuma and that my friend is truly Ludicrous. I personal do not consider the banning of such a thing arbitrary as it means that you can actualy play a Street Fighter instead of Akuma fighter or as someone on another forum so eloquently put it "Sentinel vs Sentinel: Fate of Two Sentiels"
In closing, imposing bans on things that would create an over simplified gamestate is no more scrubby than banning performance enhancers in sports. Or would you all prefer is every athlete was hopped up on roids?
Your mention of the metagame that evolved around the CC tactic reminds me of the way the Pokemon metagame reels whenever some dominant new strategy appears...until its counter is made obvious.
Thanks for the article. It has changed my thoughts about gaming. As a Starcraft II player, I used to whine about "cheese", "all-ins" and another "unlegit" and "cheap" strategies. Now I understand that better.
No you idiots. It takes a CODE to get!!! That is like saying you should allow people to enter ANY secret code that will manipulate the game. Would any game, in ANY competition ever allow a code in legitimate play? NO!
SHUT THE FUCK UP!