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)
I don't really like the part of this article(or of the book) where you write about Akuma and what should be banned. It's not really about playing to win at all. Certainly it's important to your overall enjoyment of a game, but thought processes like "Akuma is so broken he needs a ban" don't help you win or improve your game at all, and are actively detrimental to your chances of winning if you spend time on them within the course of a match or tournament. You handle the question of what can and should be banned in a game very well, but it belongs in a separate article. Having it as part of a piece on improving your ability to succeed is distracting and confusing and likely contributes to the volume of awful comments you receive here.
The rest of the article is spectacular, as is the book. Keeping this kind of thinking at the forefront of my efforts has greatly increased my level of success in competitive settings. Thank you for that.
VTC: I disagree, obviously, which is why I included a section on what should be banned. Because part of the whole process of getting over these mental hurdles is to stop saying dumb things should be banned, it is a very relevant question, "Ok then what SHOULD be banned." You can't say "nothing should ever be banned under any circumstance ever." That is clearly wrong. So it seems way more helpful to have some sort of notion or understanding of what a legitimate ban is.
To put it another way, if a competitor says "Thing X should be banned," he may be perfectly within a playing to win mindset, and he might not be. It depends if he is talking about a game-breaking glitch that removes his character from the game, or an unbeatable Akuma, or just something dumb like "no rushes for the first 10 minutes in this RTS." It seems helpful as a competitor to have some understanding of which of those claims makes sense.
I'm a fan of a game called Advance Wars, a Turn Based Strategy, one of the options for maps in Versus mode is Fog of War, which obscures the map, I'm actually quite good in the fog and am an excellent ambusher, in maps without ridiculous chokepoints I am a consistent winner, very few losses in FoW.
But the PvP community claim there is far too much reliance on Luck and that FoW matches often end in a stalemate, in reality FoW actually opens up the maps for a greater depth of Strategy, FoW matches take a long time while normal matches can be ended in less than a minute? It's a Strategy game, not StreetFighter, these people are of the Play to Win mentality and yet they want to get rid of naval units and FoW gameplay because they don't use them, granted I don't use naval units either because there aren't enough benefits, but FoW requires real Strategy, instead of simply SPAM INFANTRY/TANKS/ARTILLERY FASTER THAN THE OPPONENT, a skilled enough player can play this game and win a mach in FoW without being seen by their opponent.
Sadly the FoW in the only Advance Wars game made for a Nintendo System that can be played online, the FoW is the worst in the series, in the other three games it's pretty much the same, though the third reveals all of a certain type of terrain which would be beneficial to hide sometimes, mind the unit that can travel over it isn't all that useful.
Do a quick search for Advance Wars and tell me, is Akuma like Sturm in BHR? Or is he closer to Vonn Bolt in Dual Strike?
It seems to me that people have really misunderstood many things about the author's point of view on the matter of bannings. Though I have not played any of the street fighter games, myself, I have it on good authority that Akuma in this example is dramatically better than any of the other selectable characters, to the extent that he should be unbeatable as long as the player who selects him knows what they are doing. If playing Akuma vs Akuma would unlock a whole new side to the game that had never before been seen, that happened to be gaming gold then the case may have been different, but in this example it is not really the case, and allowing Akuma to stand serves only to lock away gaming gold that is there. This is an unacceptable situation, really, and warrants a ban. Otherwise 'Game x' suddenly becomes 'Game Y' but, importantly, game Y is considered wildly inferior to game x.
The heart of the matter is that whatever has just been discovered makes the game worse in some way, and this can happen if the only viable counter is to use the same tactic - sometimes this is an acceptable situation, and the game can still be played competitively, sometimes it breaks the game so that it would not be worth playing competitively unless it is banned, and sometimes it might not be worth playing competitively with or without it. But, the Akuma example is one of those that breaks the game unless it is banned.
What I'm saying is that I don't think Sirlin is attacking the logic of the scrub, he is attacking his eagerness to apply it. A scrub will claim anything that beats them is cheap and should not be allowed when in reality the tactic is not cheap and has countermeasures that have either not yet been discovered by anyone, or have not been discovered by the scrub, or (sometimes) there may be a known countermeasure that the scrub deems too difficult to pull off. Either way, it doesn't matter, almost everyone is a scrub and its nothing to be ashamed about - UNLESS you're 'playing to win' in the sense defined in Sirlin's book.
A lot of games contain these so-called 'cheap tactics' and I suspect that a career of playing well balanced fighting games may have tainted Sirlin's opinion slightly on just how bad something needs to be before it warrants a ban at a competitive level. Let me start by saying that ANYTHING can and should be banned within a community if everyone agrees that it has to be, and assuming that the ban is enforceable. This stands no matter how big the community in question is, whether it is a group of friends or an entire gaming community. Usually the reason for banning something is because it seems to make the game more fun - for example, a group of friends may ban throwing in a fighting game because they think it makes it a more fun and varied experience, and this is probably true for them, while an entire gaming community may ban something like Akuma because, ultimately, it makes the game more fun to play at a competitve level and prevents pure gaming gold being locked away simply because everyone must choose this one character.
What I'm saying is that the bigger the community imposing the ban, the more likely that thing is to be 'deserving' a ban. The difference between banning throws and banning Akuma is that the throws are generally banned because the player is not himself equipped to deal with them, or they have some other mental block about them or the way the game should be played, while the banning of Akuma is because, having tried and tested the game, it is found that Akuma is a game-breaking character that no other character has an answer to, thus boiling the game down to pure Akuma vs Akuma if you want to win. If a fighting game were to be released in which throws took priority over and above any other move in the game and they just couldn't be countered, then the game would boil down to 'your best choice in any scenario is to throw' this would be a terrible fighting game, as long as throws were allowed to be used. But what if every other aspect of the game was flawless? Some people would want to ban throws, and play a 'home-made variant' that might turn out to be an amazing fighting game. What Sirlin is saying is that it is UP TO YOU whether you think something is worth sticking with - no one is forcing you to 'play to win' any one particular game, and, indeed, no one is forcing you to 'play to win.'
A lot of people are deliberately scrubs at certain things because they understand the effort required to overcome the 'cheap tactics' and they simply are unable to expend that much effort and therefore they play their 'home-made version' just to have fun with, and there is nothing wrong with that whatsoever. The point I'm trying to make is that things are banned if they are considered 'game breaking' no matter WHO bans them. A scrub bans throws because, to him, it is game breaking, when he is playing with his friends no one has any pro level answer to the throw and it suddenly dominates the game, making it a whole lot less fun for them. The pro level players are not shut down by the throws, because they had the time, effort, and skill to move beyond the throws and find counters for them, they are at the highest level of play - the level at which true gamebreakers can be called out for what they are, such as Akuma. If I played a game of street fighter against Sirlin and he whupped me with Ryu I might, incorrectly, assume that Ryu is some kind of game breaking character and that no character in the game has any kind of answer to the tactics that Sirlin is using against me, and while it MIGHT be true it doesn't excuse me just coming fresh onto the gaming scene, losing one match, and calling it cheapness. This is the path of the scrub.
The thing to take away from it all is this: things CAN be cheap, and games CAN be broken, depending on how good the game is it may take a very long time for the real game breakers to surface, if there are any, but the difference between the scrub and the pro gamer is that the scrub does not want to, at any point, face tactics that he has no answer to, he does not want to improve in order to find those answers and he will certainly not win any tournaments worth writing home about.
Yeah MossSizzle, it's really surprising that people have such trouble here. I think they are more interested in feeling clever at some contradiction, when none exists at all.
It would CRAZY to argue that nothing should ever be banned in any game, period. Like if there is some amazing game but an obscure bug crashes it, we should allow that, and all tournaments are a series of draws because every time the game crashes from people abusing the one bug. No one anywhere could possibly argue this, and I don't think anyone is. BUT, that means we have to admit that sometimes, once in a while, we have to ban something. Like, the number of things that should be banned in games in the world is larger than the number zero. That means we need some criteria to decide what belongs in that rare category and what is just being a scrubby complainer.
It seems way more useful to give an example of a rare thing that belongs in that category, but many readers appear to take the (insane) stance that NOTHING should be banned, so that even the most extreme, obvious, game-breaking thing is simply "scrubby" to complain about. Even when it removes all gameplay from the game. Really shouldn't be hard to see that more than 0 should be banned, and that Akuma is an excellent example.
I think the big thing that needs to be kept in mind is that "Playing to win" is good in certain environments, and isn't in others. If I'm playing in a competitive environment (arcade, tournament, etc), I think it's well and good to use just about every tactic you can find to win.
I also think, though, there's a place to NOT play to win. If I'm playing with a friend, casually, will I pull out all the stops to humiliate him in a series of perfect victories that asserts my dominance as a 'play to win gamer'? No. I wouldn't have many friends if I did that, or at the very least we wouldn't play competitive games, because one of us would always be better. One of us would always get started first, or pick up on the curve first, or would stop improving first, or would have less time to devote than the other, and it'd dissolve into one-sided beatdowns. Besides that, sometimes house-rules can be fun. Who's to say that (again, in a causal, friendly, non-competitive environment) that playing a 'no punches' or 'no grabs' or 'no projectile' can't be entertaining?
I personally find glitches to be a bit of a grey area (should I really take advantage of a bit of code that went missing to win a game?) as they tend to feel to me a bit like, say, a mis-printed card in Yomi or disk in Puzzle Strike; it changes the game in a way that it wasn't meant to be. Sure, sometimes everyone can take advantage of a glitch (everyone can buy the mis-printed chips, since they're so good, or just accept the fact that Geiger's 3 attack does 30 more damage than it should), but it still changes the way the game is played. The big problem with arcade games is that you can't just send out a mass patch and fix it, unlike posting erreta for a board/card game, and you can't expect people to come to a tournament and play nice when the management springs it on them that they're using a 'fixed' version of the game and that all their advanced strategies are useless.
Video games are unique in that regard. In any other competition, you don't have those kind of loopholes, because you don't have the underlying, inflexible framework. In tennis, the judge has the final say, while the cabinet does in Street Fighter. You won't be able to win a tennis match by hitting the ball into an area that should be out of bounds, but the judge sees as in due to a 'glitch' in his eyesight. A football player can't find a magical way to throw a ball to break gravity, and if he tries to find some weird way to technically stay in the rules while breaking the spirit of them, the Ref, not some almighty law that rules the world, gets final say.
I also find myself cringing a bit when a glitch or oversight totally changes the feel and effect of a game. Imagine a shooter game where, through a glitch or misplaced decimal point, turning around three times makes your next shot with your default pistol insta-kill the next guy you shoot. You can tell that's not meant to be how the game is played, because there's nothing about it in the guide or booklet or help page, and there's a huge variety of fun and interesting weapons, but the spin-and-shoot changes the game, and no-one ever bothers with anything else. I feel the same way with fighting games where a glitch or something of the like makes all the super moves and ultra moves and special moves and finishers less effective than mass throwing. I just can't shake the feeling that, if the game was supposed to be about that, the makers would've focused more on that aspect.
Again, the 'play to win' mentality might say glitches are fine, and I certainly can't argue with the opinion other people hold, but there's a gray area in there between "Unintended but workable" and "Game breaking" that I prefer to just stay out of if I can. It's just too personal to call. What's one man's 'strategy' is another man's cheap glitch, and the only reason the line is drawn one place or another is because of personal and group preference. If the community of Street Fighter, as a whole, had judged, say, repeated grabs, or unblockable CCS as 'too game changing', then the line would be drawn there. Again, my personal opinion, and not an attack on anyone else in this thread in any way.
Now, I have an honest question, and just in case I mis-word it or the internet makes me sound sarcastic or rude, I don't mean to offend, sound angry, judgmental, etc. What does the Playing to Win bit say about things like items in the Super Smash Brothers games? Does it even have an input on them? I know a lot of 'pro' players say that it adds to much luck, but a cursory glance over the philosophy seems to indicate that if I grab a star and gold hammer and pound a guy into the ground with it, it's just me playing to win, and that turning off items is something like disallowing very specific glitches, since anyone can pick up a bomb or star with equal fortune, and since it doesn't matter what character you play as, or map you're on, it seems like it should be allowed, since the game has them enabled by default, and those that turn them off are 'scrubs' because they can't deal with the fact that I can 'roll a hard 6' and get a star, or draw just the right card in Magic or Yomi, or continually get perfect hands in Puzzle Strike, or just get lucky when my opponent hand slips in chess and he lets go of his piece too early and moves his queen next to my pawn.
@Nessmk2 There you go, my whole point about Glitches that Sirlin just dosn't seem to get.
I don't often have items switched on for Brawl myself, because most of them are too powerful when one player (almost always the winning player) picks them up, items I absolutely hate are sudden death items, exp[ecially the Bob-omb I can't tell you the amount of times I've been KOd in a match against a friend because one of those spawned right on my character.
There's been a lot of screaming by Tournament Players to ban MetaKnight because he's broken, apparantly (almost) lagless moves, high priority with Specials (that leave him vulnerable if used in the air) and high speed make him broken, now contrast MetaKnight who's lagless moves have a rather long animation and can be a hindrance when they miss.
With Chain Throwing and Planking, okay so a Chain Thrower is someone who'll grab you, throw you to the floor and before you can recover grab you all over again until they throw you off the stage, you can take over 100% on Final Destination with a single application of this and Planking is the art of hanging off a ledge dropping down and flying back up trying to hit an opponent for minor damage each time, it is pretty much how everybody plays Cruel Brawl true, but why use it against another player? The AIs in Cruel Brawl will always KO you by spiking you no matter how many you get to make those suicidal jumps.
If a player is skilled and/or using a character with "flight"/multiple jumps they can easily spike Plankers, but Chain Throwers cannot be attacked once they grab you, Spammers will keep you locked down and usually traveling toward the edge of a stage while completely helpless, kinda like you explain how Akuma is broken, all three of these player types appear in Tournaments, "Playing to Win" you can either go against what you say and tell me that these play styles which involve people playing the game nowhere near how it was ever intended to be played and turn the game into something else should be okay to use, which gos against what you said about Akuma Fighter, or you can go against your "Use everything possible to win" ideals by accepting that these are two overpowered and one idiotic ways to play the game.
Thedreadnaught: I will try to politely say that you are the one who doesn't have a handle on the issue of glitches, and it's not that I cannot understand your point. Just for starters, any game you can think of has glitches that are a) not possible to ban and b) you have no way of knowing if they are really intended or what.
Street Fighter Alpha 2. When you CC, then sweep, the opponent can't block unless they were blocking already. Players call it the Valle CC. Is it a glitch? Probably. But it's also a consequence of their system. Maybe we can write a letter to some japanese guys and ask them if they meant it or not? a) ridiculous and who cares what they meant and b) it's not feasible to ban if they didn't mean it.
The iceman glitch I mentioned many times that lets him do slightly more damage on his super. It's not warranted to ban because it hardly matters. It's not feasible to ban even if you wanted. It's not exactly clear if it's a glitch or just a consequence of their system. It seems a glitch but whatever.
Juggernaut bug in MvC2. This lets him do way more damage than usual, but requires setup to do the glitch. It's almost certainly unintended (but again, do you really want to base this stuff in mind-reading developers??). It's not warranted to ban though. Juggernaut is not even one of the top 20 characters in that game so who cares.
Kara throws. This is clearly a glitch, it extends your throw range when you do a tricky input. It's also kind of a design glitch rather than a tech glitch because it's a consequence of their system. Not feasible to ban. Also, after Capcom knew about this, they made SF4 that still has this glitch, and said it's ok. Does that mean it was not ok just before they said it? Or that it was not ok in SF3, but once SF4 came out and they it's ok that it *becomes* ok in SF3? No, as far as banning goes, it was ok all along because there's no way to ban it anyway, and caring about developer intent is way too dicey.
It really goes on and on and on and on like this. You can't be trying to mindread developer intent, and you get what you get anyway. Lots of things that are glitches, you probably don't even realize are glitches, they are just how the game is and top level players use them routinely. "I don't use glitches" is a nice stance if you're not familiar with actual games, but it makes no sense when you look closely.
Umm Stirlin, I have used some glitches when playing games like Oblivion and Advance Wars, going through the main story, the glitch in Advance Wars involves a long winded process that allows instant wins on several Campaign/War Room maps, the one for Oblivion involves item cloning.
Strangley enough one of th methods for duplicating items, the only one known at the time has been patched ad is unusable, surprising isn't it? The developers didn't want people to become factories capable of reproducing anything they can find, but the game was originaly made with the ability to clone just about anything, so they must have intended for the player to be able to do that right? I mean common sense says "no" but who uses that? Dosn't that sort of thing weaken your chances of winning? Maybe everyone who plays Oblivion should find a paintbrush and start duping them in the Temple District of the Imperial City in order to reach the end of the Main Quest as soon as possible, unlike those "Scrubs" who play through normally.
BTW I'm pretty sure someone mentioned Snaking in Mario Kart a while back, I used to be fantastic at Drifting on Mario Kart DS, but sadly my R button is worn, I've got the hang of it in pretty much every other Mario Kart game though and it's not a glitch, the ability to gain a speed boost after drifting was obviously intended as it's been in the series ever since MK64 and it even has those little signals for when the boost is ready, to go around an entire track doing this (including the straights) requires just a little more skill than simply using it for a corner.
Often I prefer to change the rules of play in ways that help my opponents more than me. How does that fit into the theory of scrubdom?
I have no disagreement with the idea that people shouldn't change the rules of play just to favor what they are good at and disfavor what they are bad at. What seems questionable to me is the implication that when people want to add or modify rules of play, that is usually their main motivation. I just don't see it that way. I think people are usually just trying to find the common set of rules that gives them collectively the most enjoyment. There's nothing sanctified about the original designer's intent, even if you could know what it was, which often you can't.
How would the theory of scrubdom apply to things like offside rules that were added to sports to constrain what were seen as undesirable strategies? Those seem like they would fall into the same paradigm of people looking for rules to protect themselves rather than "man up" and play to win with the original rules.
Threadnaught: As an Advance Wars fan, Akuma is basically what AW2 Sturm would look like if they decided he needed to have his units the way they are, and cost half as much.
@Threadnaught: I have some experience with AW, so: Akuma is worse than Sturm. Sturm might be comparable to HDR Akuma, where he's so ridiculously better than other characters that there's no reason not to pick him unless he's banned. ST Akuma is like playing Sturm with infinite money and Hachi's ability to buy from towns.
Von Bolt is not even a real boss character. His super meter is too long and his super is really bad. His +10% defense with no economy cost isn't bad, but as far as AWDS is concerned, Colin and Hachi are the real broke characters. Colin and Hachi are really really busted. If AWDS was a tournament game, I'd ban those two characters.
On the odd subject of AW as a competitive game, I find that AWDS with single CO (with fog of war) is better than AW2 or DOR. Nobody plays that way, but whatever. AWDS is generally a better game than DOR if tag combos are removed. IMO, anyway.
@Auspice I agree...
About how Advance Wars should be played competetively, as long as you ban Skills and the COs with Strengths but no weaknesses.
If AWDS were a Tournament Game, the banned COs would be Jake, Rachel, Nell, Hachi, Grit, Colin, Eagle, Javier, Sonja, Sensei and Lash, with Max, Grimm and Von Bolt being chosen only by the truly hardcore.
I actually think, that because Akuma is meant to be the unlockable boss of the game, he's Kanbei with the four Defence boosting Skills and Sonja with all the Tag Partner increasing Skills, Invincible Kanbei is what this is called, Kanbei has 133% attack power and 150% defence all for having to pay 20% extra. (Akuma for having to type in a code?)
As far as "playing on a higher level" goes, that's all well and good but, then, at what point does personal playstyle preference comes into the equation? "Do this if you want to win" , well what if I don't want to do that to win? Everyone else is doing that, ad nauseum and I see that it works .What you either don't wish to or care to see is what I'm doing also works , too. " Professional Zoning"? Ok ,when does it cease to be that and starts becoming projectile spamming? There's a lot of people out there who play fighting games that prefer "throwing together some cicus act of a win". And while that flies in the face of those tournament types, I have to say it's better than seeing two "pros" sit in the opposite corners throwing fireballs the whole match. Truth be told , 9 times out of 10 , a Tourney player isn't mentally equiped to deal with , I guess I'll call them "Circus Players". Tourney players are SO set in their carefully crafted strategy , tripping them up with the fighting game equivalent of an Indy Ploy is easier than you think. All of what this article says seems to stem from this school of thought that apparently frowns upon thinking on your feet. Stylish unpredictability may not always win tournaments but it'll showcase the actual game and not just tricks and glitches and not how well a person can perform the hadoken 5 times in 5 seconds.....
Sylvestar: you have no idea what you're talking about. First of all, no one is telling you to play to win. Play however you want, and "just play for fun" we don't care. The book is for people who are actively trying to play to win and want to know how. Your characterization of tournament players is so far off though, that I don't even know what to tell you. You seem to think that there is more strategy in not knowing what you're doing than in being a super top player. That's crazy wrong.
You seem to contradict yourself and it seems hypocritcal.
"The game knows no rules of "honor" or of "cheapness." The game only knows winning and losing."
Then later
"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."
So actually, despite the fact that you clearly asserted that the game only knows winning and losing, you later change this stance to include some kind of limits. Here the problems with your article start to creep in.
"And if the move is, for whatever reason, extremely difficult to counter, then wouldn't I be a fool for not using that move?"
By your reasoning, which is basically do anything you can to win, why should I not use a bug that crashes the game if I suspected I was going to lose? If I am playing to win and only to win then would I not also be a fool for not using ever possible tactic available to me, such as crashing the game if I suspeted I was about to lose.
Why stop there ? Why not get up and punch my opponent in the face (if playing in the same room on a console) thus hindering their ability to play the game, why is this also not a valid tactic? We're doing anything we can to win remember, by ruling out these actions you're essentially limiting your ability to win the game. This is basically what you define as a scrub.
What you have to admit to at some point is that there are limits, and there are rules, a great many of them are unwritten and simply understood between players. Some players have a different set of unwritten rules, some people don't do things that are cheap such as repeated moves because not only do they want to win but they want an honerable win.
These things you dismiss early on like honor and cheapness are actually important to some degree, and they're important to different degrees depending on who the person is and how far they are willing to go to win, some people are merely content with doing the same move over and over to achieve a cheap win. If you were playing someone who didn't have any empathy for other people, a sociopath, they might decide to shoot you in the eye with a nailgun, hindering your ability to play the game, and then easily beat you.
The fact is everyone, including you and all the tournament players and all the pro's and even the cheaters out there who use aimbots, they all are hindering their ability to win in some "arbitrary" way, the definition of scrub is therefore meaningless and all you're really arguing for is the reason why your (or some specific) set of rules is any better than anyone elses, based on your own subjective experiences.
Frosty, there is no contradiction there, but it's common to come here and try to feel superior by claiming that. You should do any tournament legal thing to win. If your strategy to win at Starcraft is to hit the other guy in the head with a hammer, that is not playing to win and it's not being on any path of self-improvement. Why not? Because it's not legal to hit people in the head with a hammer in a tournament. The kinds of bugs that are so extreme that they crash the game are banned in tournaments. You could then ask what if they aren't? Well, that's a theoretical thing, not a real thing. No reasonable tournament will ever allow it, so it's just mental masturbation to even talk about it. Sure, if you go to some terribly organized tournament that allows hitting guys with hammers or crashing the game if you're about to lose, do it I guess. Better yet, don't go and organize your own tournaments that are not absurdly bad.
Your last paragraph is just mean words directed at me with no substance. Why are you being such a jerk here? So your show up and tell me that I'm hindering my ability to win? Uh what? What are you even talking about, how would you know, and why would make such a claim? If a thing lets you win in a tournament, do it. This is basic stuff, man. Not something you need to insult me over.
You also assert the definition of scrub is meaningless. This is easy to counter, because uh, what are you even talking about? The meaning is a person who holds themself back with extra rules not in the game, for example "I won't throw" or "I wont attack a guy right after he spawns." It isn't meaningless, that is the meaning right there.
Learn some respect and ask questions if you're confused. Also post in the forums if you're going to have such a low quality of discussion. These comments here should be reserved for good quality points only. Here's the link where you can write more of that kind of accusatory stuff: http://forums.sirlin.net/forumdisplay.php?f=4
I was a bit intrigued by one of the previous posts comparing video games to tennis or football - namely, the final say in a video game goes to the cabinet rather than being arbitrated by an official. This is interesting because I officiate a lot of football, and in most situations if someone is 'abusing' a tactic that isn't covered by the rulebook there isn't anything we can call on the field to change that. Now, the rulebook has been around for a long time and covers most things, but, for instance, there was a rule change 3-4 years ago that changed the definition of how you can legally tackle someone, known as the "horse collar" rule. I don't want to get into specifics, but suffice to say that we didn't call it before it was implemented and we do call it now. Why? Because a group of people with a great deal of information about how the game is played and how the game is called, got together and decided that this method was unfair and potentially dangerous.
Roundabout way to get to a point perhaps, but before the rule existed, players did it, now they don't. Many years ago, it was legal to slap people's helmets - it was heavily abused and brutally effective. Now it doesn't happen anymore. As a player, you should do whatever you can within the rules of the game to win. Sometimes, to make the game better, things will be banned. You do not, and should not, EVER have the power to make this decision yourself. Discuss it. If you're really set, take it to the highest level, abuse it nonstop and make people listen. If I'm not quite mistaken, Damdai did this in HDR to get Akuma banned (again).
Which brings me to my next point. Super Turbo Akuma is a really strange case of a character in an otherwise really well balanced game who absolutely ruins everything. In a community of everyone playing to win, every top 8 will be 8 Akumas.On the other hand, HDR Akuma is not in the same category, and yet is similarly banned. I'd like to say upfront that I don't disagree with this decision, nor do I feel qualified to really weigh in on the pros and cons of HDR with Akuma. However, I think the tone of the article may be a bit strong on what should be considered banable. There is a lot of focus on things that irrefutably destroy the game - like game crashing bugs and 'boss' characters, but no real leeway for communities to create their own rules. Several stages back in Smash Bros. Melee were banned because they significantly changed the way the game was played. As to whether this made the game more or less 'deep', or more or less 'fun', I don't think we'll ever really know. Is Super Turbo better, as in Japan, when Old Sagat doesn't show up to dominate half of the roster? Would Brawl be better without Metaknight? Would Soul Calibur IV without Hilde?
Now I realize this is, by definition, scrubby, but I should clarify that I don't feel strongly that any of those things should be banned, just that it is up to the community as a whole to decide whether they are and that it is quite possible to improve a game (as HDR theoretically has been) by doing so. Not a dig at you, Sirlin, I just couldn't find another good example. I think it's a damn shame that Capcom won't patch it.
PS: It's really unfortunate that 'scrub' has been hijacked and turned into such a derogatory term. I think when the scientific diagram showed up most people just glazed over and stopped reading. As it is now, you say someone is being scrubby and it's like you punched their mother.
It's possible all those games would be better without those characters. I'm not saying they would be, but yes it's a possibility. It's also possible for a community to decide to make that call and for it to be ok, but it's a pretty gray area. Here's what you should really consider regarding the article. Some things are gray areas, like should you ban Hilde. Some are NOT like should you ban ST Akuma. The point I'm making is that in the normal course of playing any of these games, there will be 1000 things asked to be banned. You should reject all these claims by default. That's the big lesson. Most things called to be banned aren't warranted or feasible. But there are a few things we do really and truly have to ban (dear jackasses: no that isn't a "contradiction").
If that is all anyone learned from this, we'd be doing great. It's a real obvious concept, actually. Don't ban stuff unless you mean it, and premature bans are bad. But look how much trouble people have with it. Even in the most clear-cut case in the entire history of bannings--ST Akuma--some people still can't figure it out. They don't understand that a super extreme thing like that is ok to ban. (Sidenote: if you didn't ban ST Akuma, the top 8 would not be all Akumas. Instead, the player community would softban and not play him because he obviously breaks the game, or more likely there would be no top 8 at all because no one would play the game in the first place.)
Anyway, it's intentional I don't bring up the very rare case of legit gray areas like Hilde or something. If people struggle with the black and white obviousness of ST Akuma, they just aren't ready to hear about gray areas. And if the article makes people realize that for the most part, you don't want to ban things, then the purpose is served. That attitude makes you try to find counters and actually get better at a game.
Excellent article - I read it a long time ago, but a conversation I was part of in an MMO made me read it again. I played StarCraft, Street Fighter 2, Warcraft 3, and Samurai Showdown competitively, back in the day.
I don't understand all the hatemail in the posts. The article is about improving in gaming competitions, but instead people who likely will never be involved in gaming competitions attack statements about something that they'll never actually have to deal with.
A player that was the victim of a so-called cheap tactic was ranting on about how the perpetrator had no skill, and he went on a tirade about how that person should be banned. Meanwhile, there were plenty of counters that he could have used, which I mentioned to him, but he wouldn't listen to reason.
Rather than try to take issue with certain statements in the article, use the ideas in it to improve your game. If you're not trying to improve your game, than why are you reading it in the first place? Unless you came here accidentally from a google search, looking for info on ATP
Reading this article, I think it's no longer possible to argue Akuma as OP anymore, especially with games like Super Street Fighter 4 and Street Fighter 3 or even Capcom vs. SNK 2 where he's been clearly balanced out. Only if you refer to the old, OLD ST games is the Akuma argument even relevant anymore.
Also, this 'competitive' mentality you have basically states, as TVTropes as eloquently summarized: "If you're not playing a game at a cut-throat competitive level, you're not worthy to talk about it or venture an opinion on it."
I never particularly understood the need of competitive gamers to make games competitive. For example, Super Smash Bros Brawl. It's gotten to the point that only a small handful of stages are "legal" in tournament play, items are flattly banned, and you only see the same 5-6 "top tier" characters. This, from a game specifically designed to be a fun, random-as-hell party game. Even the designers spoke out against people trying to make the game into a competitive-style game. Not to mention the fact the competitive gamers complained when their favorite "bug" (wave-dashing) was altered and in some cases completely removed.
What is so wrong about playing a game to win where luck is a factor? The need for competitive players to remove any semblance of luck and/or attempt to "balance" via rules and tier lists feels largely prohibitive to the fun. It's why I stopped playing MvC2, because unless your team consisted of Cable/Magneto/Storm/Sentinel then you were a loser and a pussy who had no right being at the controller/arcade stick.
The problem with your mentality is, you've created a plateau, a barrier which for most is insurmountable. Most new players start as scrubs, and if they wish to become true competitive pros, they have to "improve", but at some point it becomes impossible to improve, because of the difference in the level of skill. Dividing the community into only pros and joes leaves this vast empty space inbetween the two where a lot of gamers float in limbo. They're much better than the joes, but not good enough to be pros, and the difference between them and the pros is so great there's no room for improvement.
Again, a reason why I up and quit playing most fighting games and CCGs, I would quickly run into this wall, wherein I was better than those below me, but those above me would thrash me senseless. I would have streaks of playing where I would lose every single match. I know you're supposed to learn from your mistakes, but it's hard to "improve" when even the slightest mistake (the ones "pros" apparently no longer make upon achieving that god-like level) gets you utterly destroyed, and then ridiculed for it. The pros seemingly do not want the joes reaching their level, or they're unwilling to help. Improvement is fine and all, but you can't learn from your mistakes if no-one is willing to help point out what your mistakes are to begin with.
Melfice:
1) We are ONLY talking about ST Akuma here. We are not talking about any other version of Akuma in any other game.
2) Your outlook on competitive games is bizzarre and limiting. There is no problem with the mentality I presented. If you don't want to play a game at a competitive level, then don't. No one is saying you have to, and this article is ONLY for people who are trying and failing at it. If you reach a point where you have trouble improving, you can still improve. Do not limit yourself with ideas about plateaus. Many, many times I personally reached a plateau and learned that I could still go further.
3) You are telling us how to play, and that's a really bad attitude. I'm not telling anyone how to play. If you want to do your own casual thing, go for it. If you want to be competitive, what I've said will help you. Your stance of "don't even try to be competitive" doesn't help anyone.
Hey Sirlin, recently Daigo said in an interview that "Winning is not hand-in-hand with being strong." Anything to add, detract or comment on regarding this statement? Not 100% related to your article.
I'm not sure what Daigo means there, it's kind of not specific and possibly lost in translation. He might mean that there is some variance so that it's possible the outcome of one particular match to not determine the better player. Yeah, someone could get lucky just one game. Over a longer set of games or set of tournaments that should even out. He might have meant something else entirely by that though, not sure.
Indeed, I think he is speaking from his experience in single elimination tournaments. I was just trying to think of scenarios where you could win, and not be a strong player, and the only reasonable possibilities are luck or an unknown trick (but that's not really "weak").