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 just wanted to say, this whole serious of articles (haven't yet read the book) is fantastic and was a big part of my improvement as a SF/MvC2 player. I'm a little confused on how people are having so many problems understanding the article, since it seemed simple the first time I read it, and it seems simple now.
Either play to win, or stop complaining about people who are. Playing for fun is all well and good, but if you run into a buzzsaw, do not complain about how badly you were beaten or how unfair the match was. If you want to win, then Play to Win. This seems so simple.
As for ST Akuma, there's a simple way to explain this I think to people not familiar with him, and I can't believe that he's still getting discussed at all. Admittedly, the article can seem a little contradictory at first, but if you think about it for more than a few seconds, you can put the pieces together. ST Akuma is roughly equivalent to a gun in an FPS that instantly kills any opposing player with a hundred foot circle, every time you fire it. Contrast that with a gun that kills in a single shot, but is otherwise a standard issue gun. The single shot kills gun is massively powerful, but shouldn't be banned, because the player with said gun can still be outpositioned, shot in the back, shot first, etc. It makes you exceptionally dangerous, but isn't unbeatable. It might make the game less fun, and if that's a problem, play a different game. The first gun, the instant kill gun, is different. That player will win every round, every time, no matter what. Even if there's a MASSIVE skill difference between the two players, the player with that gun will win every time. So both players pick that gun. That might be fine, assuming the levels were large enough. But what if both levels are exactly 100 feet in diameter? The winner would be whoever fires first, every time. Now you have a game with all gameplay removed, stripped down to an empty shell of a game. This is similar to ST with Akuma. If you don't ban Akuma, both players pick Akuma and shoot air fireballs at each other until one of them falls asleep. This ruins the game. It doesn't ruin the game because it's obscenely powerful (one shot kill gun, Old Sagat), it ruins the game because it inherently destroys the game engine, making it impossible to play.
It's possible to probable that you answered this already, but I don't feel like reading 6 pages of comments. Do you define scrubby rules as those that are imposed only by one person/faction, or as those which arbitrarily eliminate a balanced aspect of gameplay? If you mean the former, I would tend to agree. If you mean the latter, definitely not.
My friends and I used to play Halo 2 nearly every time we got together. We had various house rules. For instance, in free-for-all matches, a temporary alliance was automatically declared by all other players if one person got a kill streak. Another rule was that anyone caught looking at an opponent's screen would have to stand still and be killed by that opponent. We would sometimes set rules within game modes, like only allowing the Magnum pistol to be used even though other weapons were on the map. Neither I nor any of my friends would consider these rules at all scrubby. We all knew them going into the game and we wouldn't have thought of expecting other people to use them. They weren't meant to give advantage, to remove it, or to do anything at all except make the game more interesting and fun.
Finally, I have to accept that I'd probly be considered somewhat scrubby. I don't always play to win. I play to have a good time and blow off some steam. If I'm worried about my score all the time, that doesn't happen.
Andy, split-screen Halo is a lousy context for practicing playing to win. Correct play involves nonstop screen-looking and awkward politicking depending upon who is in the lead, and doesn't make for a very fun or exciting game. This isn't a knock on Halo or the split-screen experience. I love both. It just isn't the best time for Playing to Win. This probably goes for most games with more than two opposing sides.
On banning in general: 'Warranted' is necessarily a subjective criteria. The elements that you want to ban are the ones that leave a better, more interesting game in their absence(for which a ban is enforceable, of course). The problem is that it's very, very difficult to accurately determine which game elements these are. If you look at ST and Starcraft: Brood War, you see games that are still evolving more than a decade after their release. If a game is good at all, you will have a very hard time telling whether a strategy is even actually the best, let alone whether or not it makes the game worse for its existence. So you don't want to be too hasty in banning a game element, lest you end up as one of those Starcraft players who have banned rush tactics and miss out on a spectacular game as a result.
Agreed totally, and I have this argument nearly every day with Starcraft BW, Gunz and Melee.
Do yourself a favour and re-write the article to say that Akuma requires a cheat code. It would be like being able to use "greedisgood" in warcraft melee tournaments. However all of the bugs and glitches do not require cheat codes and are available in the vanilla version.
The element here is that there is a group that believes that the use of bugs, abusing the system structure and otherwise manipulating the game into certain actions is playing the game. I think there is a point where you no longer play the game, but attempt to manage the game for a desired outcome.
I'm not above playing to win, I can admit I'm a scrub, but that does not make me a bad gamer, as it does seem to imply among certain crowds. When you point out the fact a tactic, such as fazing, is based on a hole in the system until it was patched is a perfect example of this, you merely get called unskilled and abused for that. The real issue is that companies seem to encourage that attitude, and denying it is foolhardy at best.
Starcraft on the upper echelons of competitive games is prime proof of this, as it was described to me, Spamcraft and its expansion, Brood Wars. Now we have the first part of Spamcraft II. I can't wait to see the end, as ideally, balance would have been found and openly abused elements in the system removed.
For the Akuma example, Sirlin could have avoided a lot of trouble by pointing out that he requires a cheat code to use, and that cheat codes are no bueno...
I have pointed that out dozens of times now and it has no effect on the clueless or those who purposefully wish to misunderstand.
I think the family goes a long way to determine your "scrub tendencies". here's a story of mine:
when I was quite young, I was playing a game of Scrabble with my older brother and other friends. One thing I did was to use the red squares (the ones that triple your word points) as soon as I could, even with poor words, to prevent anyone else from using them. I did this two times in a row. I win the game, and then they start insulting me! One guy had a great word to put in the red square ( the reason I did that tactic in the first place), that's why he got upset and started with the insults. But you know, I was like 10 years old! they where like 9 years older than me. What was my response? I broke into tears. I had won the game and what did I earn? Pure hate from my older brother's friends.
This type of situation may make the person feel guilty for ever trying to win anything.
The scrub has been manipulated into submittion, now he's trying to do that to everyone else through "cheap" cries. He's been castrated, and so he does not step up into the adult world where actual competition exists.
Wow, I've never read somehting so hilarious. The whole problem with your argument is that it is hypocritical.
Here is the object of any game:
To win.
Simple no? No ambiguity there, no confusion. But your take is that to win means "to do anything you can to win". Now, where did that come from? What evidence for this? You read "to win" and ASSUME that it means doing anything to win. It's merely your opinion, much like it is a scrubs who thinks there should be gentlemens rules to winning. They do exactly as you do, read one thing and make up their own opinion.
Again, the original objective to any competition or a game is:
To win
Your objective is:
To win by any means necessary
The Scrubs is:
To win, but with guidlines to promote fun play.
Your view is just an opinion and carries no objective weight, just like the scrubs. Grow up.
ferni: at least now you know better. ;)
Zack: thanks for those incoherent ramblings.
I've read through most of the replies... some are just too long winded and pointless for my to have bothered reading fully, but I think I may be able to shed a little light on what the difference between a scrub ban and a pro ban really is.
From what I can gather from various posts (and about 20 years personal experience in competative gaming), a profesional rule/ban is something that comes about through extensive research into the subject matter in question, say Akuma for example. Once one (or more) offical bodies make a ruling then it becomes a pro ruling, or perhaps a better way to think of it is as an Offical Ruling. Offical rulings are there to keep the game balance in check and ensure that the game is reasonably fair for all players, typical offical bodies are tournament organisers.
A scrub rule/ban is something that has no offical backing, its like playing poker and deciding your going to ban the use of face cards because they allow people to win too easily. Its completly arbitary and has no offical backing and as such is considered an 'unoffical ruling'.
Now there is nothing wrong with using unoffical rulings if the people you play against also want to use those rules, but lets face it, thats not competative play.
Ok, now i've cleared that up (or at least tried to), let me get on to the comments about the main article itself.
Hats off to Sirlin for comming out and expressing what many tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of gamers across the world feel. Playing to win does mean playing to win using any means necessary, if im entering a competative event I am most definately not going to go easy on my opponent, im going to play to win... if that involves using tactics normally considered 'cheesy' then so be it. If you don't want to face that kind of competative play, then don't enter competative events.
Using bugs and glitches is not wrong, after my opponent has access to them aswell, were playing the same game with the same rules after al, the only time using them becomes wrong is when they have been banned by an offical body... the difference with the Akuma example is its not a bug or glitch, its a cheat, and cheating is not acceptable under any circumstances.
Cheating exsits outside the realm of gameplay and can never coexist with it, and as such it has no place in games.
Yes the programmers/writers may have added cheats to the game (lets face it, most games have cheats of some description), but cheating is against the rules of the game and offical bodies have express rules against it (as does most non offical bodies too), this is not to say cheat codes cannot be used just that they should be limited to solo play and friendly games where your opponents agree to the use of the cheats.
The one part of the article that I do not agree with is the honour=scrub bit, I play very competatively, but I also play honourably... one of the games I play used a faction that specalises in sneaky attacks, but using them is not dishonourable, its simply playing to the stregths of my team. The only time honour actually comes into gameplay is in dealing with interactions with your opponent, and it is a good thing to have, espically for pro gamers.
Another thing I would like to note, you don't have to be a world class gamer to be a pro, you can truely suck at the game and be a pro... What makes a pro a pro is that they will constantly reassess their current skill level and try to improve themselves.
Mal is right no point. I do not play Street Fighter games, so i am going to avoid talking about them. It is not the gamer's responsibility to make sure all the rules are fair. it is the event organizers, and in many cases now the game developer's. When you have a bug in a game that prevents a move from being blocked, and it was intended to be able to be blocked, as a developers it is your duty to patch this. As a tournament organizer it is your duty to acknowledge this and make an official ruling. Either ban this move because it provides an unfair advantage, or allow it. If you allow it, and do not pick the character who can use it, or try to find a away around it, then it is now back on you as the player. However, if you [the generic you] were then to complain that they banned this unblockable move, you are now the scrub. You are the one who leans on a known exploit to get his or her wins. The true scrub is the player who lack the necessary player skill to compete on an even and fair playing field. I do not really have a problem with players using every tool available to them, but you need to understand what tools are and are not unbalanced. you need to find ways to weed out unbalanced aspects of a game. Only a truly balanced game can give you a true winner.
I play Madden [an NFL video game.] If you want to pick the best teams in the game, fine. However, if you want to exploit he AI, that is not fine. if a league does not want to have a "fair play" rule set, then many players will not play in this event. That doesn't make them scrubs like this article and the author implies. Not wanting to take part in an event that openly accepts bugs, glitches and cheating doesn't really have any merit and comes down to die rolls and luck than it does player skill. the term scrub imply a lack of player skill, when those who lean on glitches, bugs and exploits to overcome their lack of play skill are the real scrubs. the same players who scrub out in early rounds when the playing field is level.
Akuma is a cheaT (yes not p so not he is not contradicting himself) character, thus not part of the standard game.
People are still complaining about Akuma.
Lets do a short comparison.
One team in an FPS always spawns next to a button that instantly kills the entire enemy team. Will it be banned? Yes.
Is it "scrubbery"? No.
There we go, I explained it to the most extreme of extreme. If you still dont understand, you are doomed to be a scrub.
I think this article is better than the full book. While the article is specialized to one game, it gets to the point fast.
The first step to play the game to win is, to see the actual game with no artificial rules. As simple as it sounds, as true it is. Instead of thinking "this should not be a rule, the rule set denied me the win and this is not fair" one should accept the rules and see how to exploit them.
I'm going to start this off with "I understand why Akuma is banned" Really, I do, I promise
The "hypocrisy" and "contradiction" comes from the fact that you're basically telling people "Use everything at your disposal to win, unless it's so good that you'll win."
I don't think most of the people talking about the contradiction in logic comes from banning Akuma, most of them seem to understand what a game breaker is and don't repeatedly need the same examples of FPS and RTS game breakers.
As stated, Akuma's matchups are horrendously one-sided, meaning that by "play to win" logic you should be picking him every time, it's something you can do to help ensure your win.. BUT! Because he's a game breaker it removes all competition and variety from the game (why pick anyone else?), which in turn is making you have less fun. With this understanding, the banning of Akuma for competitive play can be seen as "play for fun" logic.
In fact, most bannings are in line with "play for fun" logic, removal of an element that ruins the enjoyment of the player. Yes there are idiots that want to ban everything they can't handle from any game rather than get better at it, but I wouldn't even consider them "playing for fun," they're playing because they want to win yet make up rules, cry "cheap", and try to enforce silly bans because they don't want challenge.
Carl: there is no contradiction, nor hypocrisy. (Insulting, honestly.)
Being a tournament organizer is not the same as being a player. That is the entire point here, and the point you seem not to get. There is no question of playing to win at all if you're a tournament organizer. Your job is to ban the fewest things possible such that the game isn't completely ruined. For example: things that crash the game or ST Akuma. As a player, you should use everything to you can to win. That would include Akuma, except there is not really such a game as "ST with Akuma." That is not a game that's played competitively, so it's more of a homemade thing you and your friend can play in your basement.
Another point you don't understand is that the three criteria I gave for banning things included "warranted." The point is that this is almost NEVER met. The sniper rifle, or the best character in random game X are not warranted to be banned. Akuma is a really super rare thing that is actually warranted. It seems more helpful to give an example of such a thing rather than give no example of it. Most things claimed to ruin the game don't at all. In a rare case, it actually really does ruin the game and make it a pointless non-competitive game that no one wants to play, and that no one ever even proposed to play. It really is like saying it's a "contradiction" and "hypocrisy" that a Starcraft player wouldn't use cheat codes that are banned in tournament play.
you know this makes me seriously wonder if the "serious" smb brawl players are scrubs since all they ever do is just turn off items and play on the same damn stage saying it gives everyone a fair chance
I read through the entire thread, it's amazing to me that people are debating the akuma standpoint, but maybe i can contribute from a slightly altered point of view that will convince 1% of them.
1) if you are playing to win, especially if you are playing to win in tournaments, you need to hone your skills with whatever your "main" is going to be. in fighting games, this may be a particular character, in RTS games, this will probably be a specific race, etc etc etc.
2) akuma is fucking broken. come on. he's part of the game, i do not argue that, and maybe you don't think he should be banned. it shouldn't even be arguable that he's broken though, just go play the game and you'll figure it out in 2 seconds.
3) tournament organizers are NOT players, and do not fit into either "scrub" or "playing to win" subtypes. they're the people who decide what is going to be most entertaining, what is good for the scene, what will bring in the most money, they're businessmen. in the akuma example, they will be the ones that decide akuma needs to be banned because it completely ruins the SF scene and precludes the possibility of any legitimate "higher play" scene for SF. maybe this isn't true, but it probably is, neither of those matter because the businessmen decide that's the case, so akuma is banned and so it goes.
4) it follows, therefore, that if you want to play on a large scale competitive scene in a game, you must follow tournament rules, because they're where all the greatest players congregate. you CAN play akuma in your downtime at home to crush your buddies, and maybe even play some casuals with pros using him, but if you play to win you won't because you'll be honing your skills with characters that can actually be used in tournaments, you'll be "playing to win" in a setting that "matters".
anyway, hope these aren't the ramblings of a madman, i haven't even been deeply involved in a fighting game since CvS2.
Yeah Ed, you have it pretty much right. Though I will add that tournament organizers should be banning the smallest number of things possible. For example, if the sniper rifle is really good in some game, or even if it's the best weapon, that alone is no reason to ban it. A tournament organizer should only ban things that are warranted. A helpful example that is so far over the line that (as far as I know) literally zero actual players disagree with would be ST Akuma.
I'm what qualifies (in my opinion) as an avid gamer. (Probably not what most of you would consider the same.) To clarify: I play games. Alot. All day, every day, usually. I play a wide variety of games, most of which are MMORPGS. I do not "play to win" at all times, but neither do I feel I fit your definition of what a "Scrub" is. I game for fun. If I feel like a little PvP, I PvP. If I don't, I don't.
I don't scream "NO FAIR" when someone beats me, nor do I shout "I AM THE GREATEST" when I win.
I am consistently trying to figure out ways to improve my own gameplay. I do not do so if improving would remove the fun from the game. In one of the games I play there is (currently) an archer class, which is, at high levels, literally impossible to beat by any other character anywhere within its level range. The other classes cannot move anywhere that is out of the archers range, and the archer can prevent anyone from getting close enough to hit them. They are not banned. They have not been nerfed. Yet the only people who create these archers now are those you seem to be calling scrubs.
The archers require no skill at all to play. The moves needed to win are the same against any class, any race, any weapons. The archers win and win and never stop winning. When they play against anyone near their own level, they win, then they brag for months, take screenshots, tell their mommies, etc. If they lose, say by playing against someone 20 times their level or against another archer, they scream HAX and CHEAP and then whine "Of course he won he's level XXX and I'm only XXX.
Of course he won because he's level XXX. And every fight you won, you won because you are an archer.
The community as a whole has decided to simply ignore these archers. We avoid them as much as possible. When attacked many people simply leave the fight, and continue with whatever they wanted to do before.
To my mind, this makes these archers like your Akuma.
The game developers, even, have talked about nerfing this character type in order to level gameplay, because they are impossible to beat.
This is widely known by the entire community. The other day, however, I watched a fight between one of these archers, and an assassin class. The archer, in his great conceit, was quite obviously not paying attention. The assassin made a big show to the right, to the left to the right to the right, then pounded strait up the center while the archer's head was still spinning. With the assassin directly behind the archer, the archer had no moves, no options, and was defeated. The assassin in this scenario was less than half of the archer's level. I could scarcely believe it.
Perhaps this is how these Japanese officials came up with their 9:1in opposition to your 10:0. Any character, in any game, can and will, eventually be defeated. The person who has their joystick duct taped into place knowing they will win, will come back and find the tape has slipped off, and that their ceaseless attack has ceased. Akuma will have fallen.
It isn't fair, and it isn't fun, but it is there. It is accessed by a long tedious code, but it can be accessed. It's a part of the game.
So who has the right, after whatever amount of research, to determine what is, or is not, acceptable within the game? Is it any little person who cries "Cheap!" at every move? Is it a group of people who have played for years, honing their skills? Is it the entire community of those who play the game? If the decision is unanimous, is it okay to cry cheap without being a "scrub" ? Or is up to those who develop, manufacture, or promote the game?
Playing to win is a very good concept, and it clarified many things to me. However, I can't agree that playing to win should mean playing to win at any cost. If a particular character is shunned, in tournaments, by the entire community, then there is obviously something dreadfully wrong with that character. If a particular sequence of moves is shunned by the community as a whole, then there is obviously something wrong with that sequence.
But I believe, personally, that many of your definitions are wrong. Things you have described as "bugs" or glitches were placed in games deliberately by those who invented the games. A real "bug" or glitch is something that was never supposed to happen. It's something that in online games is repaired with a patch, or an update, and made obsolete by its removal. THESE bugs, and only these, should never be exploited. Utilizing one of these glitches is, plain and simply, cheating. Play to win at what cost? It is akin, to use your example of a chess player, to a player moving his opponent's piece while his head is turned. It is wrong.
"Cheats" that are built into the game, deliberately, are another matter. If performing a certain action gives you a code to unlock a move no one else has, by all means, you should use it. You earned it, or the game would not have supplied it to you.
Beyond that, I believe that those you call "scrubs" are not really what fits the gaming communities definition of the word at all. Scrubs are those who call cheap or foul whenever something doesn't suit them. Scrubs are those who play with no forethought to their actions, doing what everyone else has told them is the best thing to do and then whining when it doesn't work. Scrubs are those who think that any action they didn't foresee is cheap because they didn't realize it could be used that way. Scrubs can even be those archers who read a guide and became invincible (well.. almost invincible.. 9:1) They are scrubs even though they are playing to win.
What's my authority on this subject? Nothing at all. I've never played in any tournament, I have no maxed characters on any game and I truly do not care if I ever do. But I have been gaming since before most "pros" ever dreamed of such a thing. I played on one of the first Ataris and I played the first RPGs on the latest model (at the time) computer with 1kb of memory and an amber monochrome monitor. I have been gaming, and studying games, and observing gameplay for over 30 years. I've taught 47 kids under 8 how to use games.. popular fun games full of violence to improve their math, logic, and deductive reasoning skills. I'm currently teaching my 2 year old to wield a joystick.
I agree fully with your assessment. You should play to win.. think through all your moves, deduce what would be the best, and least expected action, commit to that action, and follow through. I also agree with those you have lumped in with the scrubs. Certain things make the game unappealing, un-fun. less rich and enjoyable than they would, otherwise, be.
By all means, play to win, but be very sure that it is worth the cost.
A quote from the article:
In Street Fighter, for example, the scrub labels a wide variety of tactics and situations "cheap."... Nearly anything you do that ends up making you win is a prime candidate for being called cheap.
Later, in a comment, you talk about Akuma.
Akuma is not some accident... he was designed on purpose...
Okay, so he was deliberately coded into the game*. Yet, he's banned for being cheap. He's not a bug, he's not a glitch. The developers made a conscious decision to include him.
*Yes, I realize he's the result of a cheat code. I get it. The issue I (and I'm assuming many other commenters) have is that you use him as a "special case" that needs to be banned, instead of just considering him as covered under a general "don't use cheat codes in-game" rule, which I don't remember seeing any opposition to in the comments. Rather, you use Akuma as an off-the-shelf part of the game that needs to be removed. Had you used a different example, I doubt the backlash would have been as strong.
hezekiah: You still don't get it, even at this late date. If you think of a Akuma as a cheat code, it is super obvious he should be banned. BUT if you *don't* think of Akuma as a cheat code, he should STILL be banned. I will explain for the ten thousandth time. Usually a powerful thing is not "warranted" to be banned for power-level reasons alone. It's very common to hear false claims of needing to ban some fps weapon because it's "cheap" or some character because it's "OP." So by default, we reject these claims.
Do you think it would be useful to give zero examples of something that actually is warranted to be banned? Or would it useful to give one example? Seems obvious that giving one example is more helpful of a guideline than zero examples. I gave an example soooooooooooo extreme that it is absolutely clearly warranted. This is surprising to no one who has played the game. It is accepted by the entire community. It is clearly broken and game-destroying to anyone with any knowledge about this at all. The "backlash" is from people who are intentionally trying to cause trouble here, and who are not interested in learning anything. I think anonymous internet users feel smart when they find a "contradiction" when there isn't one. There is no contradiction in the advice "by default, don't ban things for power level unless they are actually truly a super extreme and broken case."
Do you see why it is ok to ban a super-extreme broken case and not ok to ban the sniper rifle? Do you see that this is unrelated to whether Akuma is cheat code, and that it's just even MORE evidence (that is not even needed) to ban him when you learn he is also a cheat code?
OMG DON'T YOU PPL GET IT? WHY ALL THIS HATE FOR SIRLIN. The developers intentionally made Akuma a ridiculously strong character. They designed him with the intention that he would be banned in competitive play, but would be a fun addition to the game for non-competitive players. WHAT IS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND!!!!!!
Sirlin I am like you in the way that this information is not something that I speak on and know. But it is something that I live by. It is the very bases of my thought process and my very being.
I met you at evo 2006 i was the doa4 player that got top 8. I bought your book, played your street fighter card game, and moved on with my life doing what I needed to do.
Although I have already spoke and praised your understanding to the highest extent possible I return to once again praise it again for just how well and sheerly it was articulated and reasoned out.
Because this information is so apart of my being (i whole heartidly believe that lebron james is a genius) I don't talk about it. When I meet a scrub occasionally, i just laugh. I haven't thought about you or your website for a while because there was no reason to. My thinking was so beyond the very basics of what is needed at base to be a high level player I simply had moved on.
But then I fell in love with a game by the name of Naruto Ultimate Ninja Strom and when its sequal came out (naruto ultimate ninja storm 2 or NUNS2 it began. The phenomina was simple, and is probably something countless people over countless other game communities have said to you (evident in the fact that you can post your response from another website).
There were more people who were "scrubs" who believed in cheap and "spam" (The most popular word in the nuns2 community) than there are people who believe in playing to win.
So now I shall go to there forums, go to there community, and post your article. Yes your book is good, but it takes so long to get to the point. This simple article says everything that needs to be said. Those who bring up other issues will be linked to other articles and those who want to go deeper will naturally read the book on their own.
You smile, this has happened before.
I smile, because I would like to thank you for writing and articulating this in such a great mannor. So that high level players like me don't have to reinvent the wheel telling this to someone all the time, but spend there time playing the game at high levels.
With this articles help, the fact that it is backed by a super top player in the most respected of all fighting games in north america, and that it is so well articulated I can show the light to the nuns 2 community yet.
Namaste to you Sirlin. Namaste to you.