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)
These Akuma posts are very amusing to read. =)
I guess each person needs an example in their own game to understand.
But, great articles and book, I often find myself rereading them when I get into a slump.
Video games used to have cheat codes built in. I'm sure most of the people calling the Akuma example hypocritical are just too young to remember. Devs just put those codes in for the lulz, not for tournament play. In fact, the concept of Competitive Gaming was extremely new if not completely non-existant, so game devs didn't feel like there was any problem with including cheat codes in their games that could be freely accessed in multiplayer.
In fact did Capcom even intend for SF II to be a tournament game? It was just an arcade game that happened to be really awesome and a competitive scene developed around it. Capcom didn't think there would be a problem with a secret code to have god-mode. It's just there to troll people in the arcades or clear the single player more easily if you don't want a challenge.
So when you play such a game competitively, you shouldn't allow god-mode cheat codes during competition. It's just common sense.
I don't remember if god-mode is enabled in multiplayer Doom, but let's pretend it is. Should people have been allowed to use cheat codes in Multiplayer Doom Tournaments back in the day? Afterall the developers put the codes in the game intentionally, and everyone can use god-mode, everyone can use get every weapon, etc.. Why not? Oh because it's FUCKING RETARDED. Nobody who took the game seriously would bother playing in tournaments allowing cheat codes, they'd just play another game or at a different tournament that didn't allow cheat codes.
I forgot about this for a while, so that is why my reply was delayed so long.
@ Brebdon: I wasn't referring to the party competing with each other. I was referring to your team competing with the opposing team. I suppose you could do the former, but the latter is the intended kind.
@ LadyLuck: Imbalance does not necessarily make a game invalid competitively. Marvel vs Capcom is an example of a game with so many imbalances that the imbalances actually balance it. D&D has a similar style to it. So yes you can shift your form into something else... and so can your opponents, as being a Druid or Wizard or what have you is not an option only available to the player. As for the warrior classes, they don't really have any functionality, so they don't have any basis in a competitive argument. In fighting game terms, they are the characters who only have one or two buttons on the controller mapped to moves, whereas everyone else has a full moveset. Being able to casually do everything they do and more reinforces this, but the fact of the matter is that they were not playable characters on their own merits, so at worst all such abilities are allowing you to do is play a similar style of character in a viable manner. As for the Wish and Pun Pun things, that is when you simply ban Akuma and then continue on with a metagame composed of the viable, non Akuma options. :D Of course to use Wish in that way you have to do more than you described, but I knew what you meant.
The real test though is to examine what happens when you take this to the logical conclusion. Well what happens is that you have a team of shapechanging casters, fighting other teams of shapechanging casters, but as that's a rather broad archetype, you still end up with a fairly diverse and complex metagame, and not "Akuma vs Akuma". So I'd say D&D passes the test. The other types of characters get ignored, just as Bowser gets ignored in Brawl tournaments.
Akuma is a boss character that should not be played.
I stopped reading there.
I hate people like this that think they are special and 99,9% is scrub and the person is not.
All this has a very negative load carrying with it and the author will always stay behind the following excuse:
I did not imply anything, you read the article and your mind made things up.
This article made me proud to be a scrub. (And yes, i am decent at the game and by no mean exceptionally.)
And yes i still improve at the game and have to live with the fact people SPAM shoryuken after a hadouken.
Oops sorry i called it SPAM, i have no right because i'm a scrub.
Good players lose against starters.
Pro players never lose against starters.
Being pro is a whole other thing, they play the game in a way beyond normal man's reach.
Is that fun?
Reconsider.... what a nice word.
Neal, that you disagree with 100% of the competitive community about Akuma is noted. That you want to play only against an unbeatable boss character and not have a real game to play is a stance that shows you are out of your depth here. Also it's unfortunate you misquoted the point about Akuma. The point is not "Is a boss character therefore should not be played." The point is "is an unbeatable character that removes all gameplay in an otherwise good game, therefore should not be played." Enormous difference.
Do people still read and post here?
I found the article an interesting read, and I agree with much of it, even if I don't come to quite the same conclusions.
I respect and even admire how dedicated and skilled players can take a game to levels that the "average" player ( okay, okay ... the "scrub" ) doesn't even know exist. And I also understand and appreciate that for those happy few at the top, this "meta-game" of finding new tactics, countering them, countering the counter, etc., is what provides them with fun - and more depth than most beginners could imagine.
I disagree, however, with the notion "playing for fun" versus "playing to win". I'd rather call it "playing for fun" versus "playing for the challenge".
The scrubs may come up with arbitrary rules. But, ultimately, *all* rules are arbitrary. The rule "throwing is cheap!!!" is as arbitrary as "throws cannot be blocked".
The difference is, of course, that one is a fixed part of the game while the other is... well, "home-made".
The former is unavoidable unless you redesign the entire game, the latter isn't even enforceable outside a small group of friends.
There is another crucial difference, and it is what separates the bad games from the good and the good from the truly excellent - "good" rules give a game more depth. "Bad" rules make a game shallow.
This is why "throws cannot be blocked" is a good rule, no matter how cheap it may seem to a player who has got his mind set on the idea that punching everyone to death is the only way to go.
And this is why "Akuma" needs to be banned. He turns a game from a deep, challenging contest into a game thats all about who's playing Akuma.
There is no challenge here and, more importantly, no way to improve. The game is pretty much dead at this point. It stagnates and that equals boredom for the pros, for whom a large portion of what makes a game interesting - and, well, fun - comes from the fact that the game grows, evolves, develops new and fresh tactics.
That is what makes Akuma cheap - not cheap as in "he gives you an advantage" ( experience, skill and talent give players an advantage, too ) but cheap as in: "He kills the meta-game of ever-improving tactics and counter-tactics". And that is why Akuma deserves to be banned. And why throwing doesn't.
However, I wouldn't call the scrubs "naive" ( for the most part, because I consider myself a scrub, of course ). While there is the whiny variant of the scrub that responds to players of vastly superior skill by calling them "cheap" and coming up with self-made rules that serve only the purpose of letting him win, I think most scrubs know they aren't playing the game to win and realize they will lose - and deserve to lose - against dedicated players who play on a professional level.
These scrubs stay scrubs not because they feel they are playing the game the "right" way, but because they simply have no interest in taking the game to the next level - even if they may respect players who do.
I don't think we need to become experts in everything we do. The difference between a profession and leisure - and perhaps between a hobby and a pastime - is that it doesn't matter how good we are at it, nor do we have to improve. Often, that is precisely what makes a game relaxing to some, where others enjoy the challenge of improving and playing to win.
I wouldn't call either way "wrong" or inferior or even naive. It only becomes naive when we fail to accept that people play games for different reasons. The scrub who expects everyone to accept his "home-made rules" commits this mistake - but so does the expert who expects everyone to play for the challenge of having to constantly improve his skill.
I'm bored, and since I've been playing all of these games mentioned for 10+ years, I'll try to put it simply:
Yes, Sirlin sounds hypocritical.
Yes, if you ABSOLUTELY want to win by ANY MEANS NECESSARY - pick Akuma. You'll most probably win no matter who you play against (noob that can do hadouken vs high-ranked player doesn't make a difference here)
But, if you say "akuma is my guy" and you pick him, soon enough you won't have any opponents to face. Thats right, people like to play and to feel a challenge. Akuma pretty much glues you in one place and chips your health away, all you can do is
1) say to yourself "pick up the slack mofo, defend better" and still be glued and trying to block while your health drains away
2) know whats gonna happen cuz this isn't the first time you saw this - you're gonna lose 108% of your health because that's how much his "combo" (hadouken spam) can deal before you can actually block.
3) hope the enemy gets tired of doing the same one move over and over and over and realizes that he's not playing YOU, he's playing a stunned dummy, he's doing multiplayer practice. He's playing solo, while both of you should be playing the game.
4) relax and hope you get finished fast so you can play another match, hopefully not against Akuma
This is also where "fun" comes into play (something Sirlin eagerly dismissed early in his text). If you want to play against people, try to measure their skill. If all you can do is trap someone in your ultimate combo, eventually you'll find a player that learns to escape your ultimate combo, no matter how ultimate it is, and you'll be forced to come up with an even better ultimate combo.
Well, that's just it, Akuma's ultimate combo is pretty much using any single move - or hadouken. Anyone that played SF Alpha 3 remembers the 100 hadoukens challenge with ryu. If you can do 100 of those without missing, Akuma is cheap. Because he can do 100 hadoukens, and every subsequent one sets you up for more hitstun, and bigger frame disadvantage.
To cut this story short - if you like playing Akuma so much, most probably you'll end up playing by yourself and noone will play with you. You can think you're the king of the world, an unbeatable arcade grandmaster or any other such delusion. But you're not - you're "good" only because you pick a guy thats so overpowered, it's just silly. Akuma vs Akuma is fine, because then we see who can use him better and who can trap the other guy first in his ultimate game-winning combo. Akuma vs Akuma is like a gunduel, the one that shoots first - wins, because the other guy is soon-to-be-dead lying on the ground, trying to get some air.
If you walk out of a Akuma vs anyone fight feeling good about yourself - you're a douche. You're the biggest douche in the world of douches. But hey, since Akuma is pretty much similar to Ryu and Ken (in his moveset that is) why don't you try fighting me Ryu vs Ryu or ken vs ryu? Because if you do you'll get your ass handed to you within moments. And then you'll go back to akuma "because he's your main guy" and because everyone that seriously played the game knows what to expect out of the fight - he'll just leave, unwilling to waste more time with you.
Yes, it's not all about you, the second player counts as well. You're both investing time. When someone is playing Akuma, the other person is just wasting his time (provided that Akuma can do hadouken).
On the other hand, if you play akuma and don't devolve into such cheapness - using taunts, running away left and right, making fun of your opponent because he can't seem to hit you - that's not cheap, thats just being flashy badass. We all know Akuma is going to win - but are you going to make this loss interesting for me to watch?
Thats where I come from. While i do tend to try and play to win, I also think about the other guy and try to make his loss interesting for him to watch. "low kick, low kick, low kick, throw, low kick, low kick, low kick, throw, low kick, low kick, low kick, throw, low kick, low kick, low kick, throw" is a valid strategy, but looks pretty boring. It's easy to say "adapt to it" - and everyone should adapt to it. But in certain cases, you can't adapt to such cheap tactics (remember Cable from MvC2? - gun, gun, gun, blaster, gun gun gun blaster, gun gun gun blaster) and you just learn to deal with them. The cable example is something I can stand for about 5 minutes, then I just have to turn the sound off to be able to play more.
But obviously you've never played someone that plays 5 matches with just those two moves. If he's a noob, he won't know what to do. If he's a higher tiered player, he'll push you away every time you dodge the gun-blaster, and keep on gun-blasting you while you're at the distance. He will use every idle moment to gun-blast, and when you do get near, he'll use other moves to push you back if he knows how to play the guy. Rinse and repeat.
Be that Cable for 10 matches or so. You'll probably get bored sooner than your opponent, because he's getting frustrated and all he wants is to shove his moves in your face at least once to show you what he can do.
He wants to be engaged in a fight, to read your mind and counter your counter to his counter in the deciding moment. Not block the first hadouken and keep on watching as his healthbar drops. At least make it interesting if you're overpowered. This is my biggest issue with 'playing to win'. Some people can make your loss look so interesting, you just want to keep on losing against them as they kill you in many different ways, thus slowing down your adaptation rate. And there's the kinda guys that just do one thing over and over because it WORKS even tho you know how to defend from it - you've seen it, you should avoid it and the situation that got you there - but in Akuma's case - you just can't.
I also like kicking the shit out of those guys that only have one routine. Once you block it and close down the routine, they're left with nothing, because they can't play the game - all they know is how to execute one "cool combo" on random people. Give them 10 games against anyone 'decent' and they'll start losing after game 3, because the other guy will adapt to them. Akuma is unadaptable. To adapt means to expect to lose, and even then you might squeeze some fun out of the game by SERIOUSLY dodging and 'practicing defensive movement' because once you get locked-down, the other guy is 'practicing hadoukens'.
Hope this clears out any disambiguity concerning this issue. Yes, Siril sounds hypocritical, but no, most of you just don't get it. There is honor among serious players, they make cheapness look attractive and not cheap, even tho it's just a huge juggle combo or something - if you think its easy, try performing the combo. If you see a combo for the first time and you can repeat it - you've got skill. If you see a huge juggle and say 'yea, lets fight on the ground you scrub, i can't block in the air' - why are you in the air in the first place? Deal with it, and avoid what got you there.
Yet again, with Akuma you cannot avoid it, because sooner or later one hadouken will connect, and thats when you can leave your joystick and start chatting up your opponent - the winner.
If you want to compete and prove you're better - play on equal grounds. Beat me with skill, not by boring me enough to lose concentration and willingness to play (and i don't mind losing 100+ matches in a row) by doing one move over and over and over. Show me everything you can do with your guy, whoever the guy is. Because that's what skill is - fully knowing what your guy can do, and being able to do everything in every situation. Then you play the game as chess - forcing the opponent in situations where he's weak, and exerting advantage by your own game, and his mistakes.
But hey, maybe I'm just a random scrub too. Feel free to hit me up on my email Sirlin. I like having these sorts of discussions with serious players. Especially when i think i understand them. And I understand why "they don't understand." Because they never played the game at that level. The level beyond joystick and the game itself. The level where two minds clash, not two sprites on the screen that do exactly what we want them to do.
Again, Akuma is banned so picking him is not playing to win. It's in the same category as kicking people in the shins, which is also not tournament legal. As to why he's banned, it's in the same category as game-breaking bugs and cheat codes. This is not "hypocritical" even in the slightest bit. The correct word is "helpful." Having an example of what's over the line is more helpful than having no example. The existence of a line is not "hypocritical" either, but the insistence that no line exists would be an indefensible stance taken by no one actually involved in any competitive game.
The Akuma thing invalidates this entire article. If someone was TRULY playing to win then he would pick akuma right? Why? Because he is unstoppable according to the author right?
I look at it this way :
Akuma = Game feature
Bug = Unsolved coding problem
To me using a bug is to be banned but using a game feature is fair game if your playing to win. It might well be so that the bug is easier handled then an overpower game feature. But after all its all in the game tho.
As for the author to sit and try to explain that Akuma is like nothing else and breaks the game I just have to say, great. Play to win right?
The game was BAD if playing to win had to be handicapped by removing a character. Even if the game was stellar without him it can never truly be said that you play to win if you dont use him. Just like the scrubs you mentioned you and the community impose certain honor and meta-rule set to the game.
And for the future author try to separate GAME FEATURES from being cheap. After all thats what the scrub does right? The difference between someone not using throws and someone not picking Akuma is non-existent, both players might be called scrubs as they both dont use GAME FEATURES. I dont care how broken he is or how unfair he is in the game. Deal with it.
Nilco
Nilco, it's to the point where posts like yours are just sad. I mean this has been explained a million times over now. No, giving an example of a gamebreaking thing does not "invalidate the article." The article's validity does not depend on the complete lack of all gamebreaking bugs in all games.
If you wanted to win, you'd play Akuma, but because he so obviously breaks the game, he is rightly banned in any real tournament. So if you practice him, you are practicing tournament-illegal moves that are no different than practicing kicking people in the shins or otherwise cheating. That is a scrub loser thing to practice. Instead, practice tournament legal things only, if your actual goal is to win. No one cares if you can win at kicking shins or with cheat codes like Akuma.
I can't believe how dense some people can be about the banning situation.
Let's break this down into the simplest terms:
1. I want to win the tournament.
2. The tournament disqualifies those that engage in X.
Therefore it follows that:
3. I will not do X because it reduces my chances of winning to zero.
Whether X is balanced or unbalanced, intended or unintended is irrelevant. I am only concerned with winning within the rules governed by the tournament organizers.
This was an amazing read. I realize this is somewhat old but I took great pleasure in reading it.
P.S I'm happy to say I play to win!
JP is correct, and anyone arguing with Sirlin is missing the point.
I've never even heard of Akuma before, nor am I interested in the fighting community or its competitive variant, and even I understand the situation.
Akuma is banned because he is so effective a fighter that he ignores the basic mechanics that create the competitive aspect of the game. He removes the degrees of success that help create an E-Sport; you either win as Akuma vs non-Akuma, or you coinflip in Akuma vs Akuma. If I wanted to flip coins, I'd just put my hand into my pocket and pull out a quarter.
Starcraft with one player having infinite minerals and gas is an excellent comparison to this. You are removing the economical concepts from the game, thereby making it a much more shallow version of what it was. The winner of the game is now the one who builds buildings and rallies units the fastest. It is actually to the point where positioning, unit composition, and strategy are also thrown out the window (there is a custom game that starts both players with infinite resources which I have played several times), which leaves... APM. That sure is fun, huh guys?
Those that have argued against Akuma being banned are proving OP's point about 99.9% of the world being "scrubs". You take the exploitation concept too far, creating your own arbitrary rule that ANYTHING must be exploited for your victory. That is not true; if something breaks or bypasses the fundamental mechanics which create the game's rules, it breaks the game.
Be honest with yourselves for once, and go learn the metagame to whatever game you want to be good at.
The problem I think people have with the Akuma example is that he's on an extreme end of the 'cheap' scale. Broken, in fact.
It's a sliding scale because if you kept redesigning a character, making them better and better via small iterations, you would move along this scale and arrive at Akuma. So why is this different to other 'cheap' options? Well, the defining difference would be that, as said, other options have a counter/avoidance or otherwise way of dealing with it. Akuma does not, he quite simply breaks the game. The problem people are having is...how do you KNOW he doesn't have a counter?
When the scrub gets ingame and gets trounced by a better player, he may call it cheap. The other player has used a technique that, even if the scrub were to think about it, could not conceivably be countered.
You know it can, you have spent much more time and effort on the game, you've been honest with your skill and have worked up to a counter. So how do we KNOW that if you played infinite hours against Akuma, you wouldn't eventually glean insight into countering him, no matter how ridiculously broken he at first appears? After all, many games can go months or years before seeing a decent counter to a strategy, especially in team-play where group composition is important.
We don't know that in a literal, cosmic sense, and if you say you do, the concept of infinity is lost on you. But this isn't to fault Sirlin or his supporters, they are in the right. To claim Akuma is the same as an exploitable bug is incorrect. It's a matter of scale and, sadly, of indefinable common sense. If you kept redesigning Akuma, slowly making him worse and worse, where EXACTLY is the line whereby he becomes acceptable? We don't know. In fact, it's an infinitely thin line.All we can do is learn the game inside and out, given our own finite lifespans and collected knowledge, and make a sensible assessment that he is not just more powerful than other chars (IE: Metaknight, SSB) but is flat out an instant win for anyone who picks him.
More importantly, what should be understood is that those protesting his exclusion are as faulty as the scrubs, note JP's above post.
JP's post is the only post that matters. You play in a tournament, you play by their rules. If they wanna ban all chars but one...well... that's their call. This is pertinent to myself and many others today to competitively PVP on MMOs because we can say "it's in the game...so use it". In this case, the devs are essentially running the tournament. If Capcom were to hold a SF2 tourny tomorrow with no game changes, do we suppose they would allow Akuma? No, not even for a second.
So when you complain about the tournament rules, you are free to play by your own. But you'll lose the tournament. Sirlin wins tournaments.
I may be a little late out of this gate but for I and my friends usually play very competitively...in tournaments but when we play against each other we play more "scrub" style so that we are forced to learn different things within the game that we would've ignored had we not limited ourselves otherwise.
On the Akuma for ST he is a Secret Character and unless it is otherwise mentioned he should stay a secret not to be used with hundreds or even tens watching unless it is a group decision.
a last mention is of course the fact I enjoy playing "scrub" and competitive they are different flavors that can be enjoyed in my opinion which you are free to call wrong or right or indifference if you so choose.
Looks like most scrubs defined in this are good players. While good players in this are simply the competitive ones.
akuma rules, deal with it, just because you don't have the skills to pull it off in the select screen means you fail.
period.
Not trolling, anyone who doesn't select the best char available to him/her is scrub.
Writes "not trolling", then trolls.
@HyTex, tell me the last SC2 Tournament you watched where the winner won purely because his APM was excellent, while his unit composition/placement was terrible.
There are times where playing "like a scrub" means better gameplay, like any kind of 6-pool. You know why that is considered bad? Because 6-pool means it is OVER within 5 minutes if the player gets the positioning of his enemy right. It is counterable, but is soft banned because it leads to extremely boring matches. I'm in bronze league, and 3/4 of my game time is spent being rushed by bad players who "play to win". Very boring, makes people rage and is not fun for either end, but people still use it because it is cheap and easy. And because an entire community is objective to this strat, does that make them all scrubs? No, it makes it a cheap strat, but still you would call that scrub's rules, wouldn't you? Because just because something wins 8:2, doesn't mean it shouldn't be used.
Vanties,
the sixpool is *not* soft banned. It is a viable strategy, used by pro players when they think the opponent opens with an overly greedy strategy. A sixpool at the right time and executed well is in no way a scrub strategy. The reason that we see it so rarely is that the risk is too high versus common openers. If you sixpool all day long in a tournament, you are guaranteed not to win.
I broadly agree with your article and I mostly came to the same conclusions myself after playing Starcraft for a while.
I wanted to write how what appears to be a glaring contradiction in the paragraph about Akuma defeated the purpose of the whole article, but after reading a few of the comments about this subject that have been posted in the last 3 years I think it's just badly worded.
The crux of the matter is not that scrubs aren't allowed to remove "cheap" tactics, and competitive players are, it is that in one case the rules are unwritten, subjective and change from one person to the next, and in the other case the rules are written and agreed upon by everyone, and anything that is in them must be obeyed, but everything that is not in them is fair game.
My point is that competitive Super Turbo Street Fighter players are not playing Super Turbo Street Fighter, but a slightly different variant, "Super Turbo Street Fighter without Akuma". Once that is clear, the point about Akuma becomes moot. Akuma is simply not part of that new game. People can disagree on this, but the rule is the same for everyone.
The mistake you make is saying that :
"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."
Be objective and realize that the made up version is the one without Akuma, and that the competitive world chose to play this variant. Simply saying that you should play like this because it is what "everyone else is playing", is the non-argument by excellence (you should know that) and is bound to bring much arguing.
I don't think it's badly worded, but I do think your post is badly-argued. The game was played in tournaments for over a year before Akuma was even known to exist. After he was discovered, there was no change, and tournaments were still played without the cheat code to unlock a broken boss character. Probably the confusion is that outsiders don't realize how far over the line Akuma is, and that in reality it's so far that everyone immediately correctly rejected the cheat code as clearly not something that's part of serious play.
It's not a fallacy (actually it's the opposite: a real argument) that if you want to play the game competitively, you should use the competitive standard of no Akuma. It is highly relevant that no one plays the game with Akuma when it comes to your choice of what to practice. It's not "argument by excellence" or whatever. If you want to play to win, you need to practice tournament legal things, and kicking people in the shins or picking Akuma is not legal in any reasonable tournament. You certainly COULD hold a tournament where kicking people in the shins or picking Akuma was legal, but communities have formed reasonable rules against those things, so you'd be playing outside of "playing to win" in those communities if you house-ruled stuff like cheat codes/shin-kicks.
Lol - reading through those old comments made me laugh so hard. Especially "anon"'s insistence that AoC was a good competitive game...
I was into high-level AoC and played high-level AoM and AoT when they came out (I played in the first and only WCG that featured AOM) - Those games were absolutely not good for competition. Why do you think games like WC3 and SC:BW continued to be played at tournaments like MLG and WCG but the AoX games only lasted a year or two? Because without lots of silly and arbitrary rules the games were broken. Sure, with those silly and arbitrary rules in place, the games were "playable" at a competitive level, but why even bother when other RTS games existed which were playable at a competitive level without silly rules?
Personally I am sad that AoC and AoM competitive scenes never embraced custom maps. In ultra high-level play, you absolutely NEED custom maps that can be tweaked for balance. With well-designed custom maps, you also wouldn't have to create silly rules about which factions the players can/can't play, etc.
I think Sirlin that if you made an Akuma is to Street Fighting as face-masking is to football analogy, people would find it more acceptable. In both cases, there is a physical option for the player. They could pick Akuma just as they could grab a face mask.
If a player feels this ban is unwarranted, it means nothing in terms of playing to win. If the ban is unwarranted, emotions and opinions are still meaningless. Using Akuma and face-masking are both illegal and not within the spirit of playing to win.