Playing to Win, Part 2: Mailbag

Rebuttals and Clarifications

My original Playing to Win article generated an incredible amount of e-mail, mostly of the form:

Dear Sirlin,

I thoroughly enjoyed your Play to Win article. It has changed the way I think about games. [Or, I always believed the same things about games but you put them into words for me.] What you described about Street Fighter is exactly the same for [game X] that I play.

This man just read Playing to Win. "Game X" took the form of Counter-strike, Virtua Fighter, Magic: the Gathering, Legend of the 5 Rings, Starcraft, Smash Brothers, Scrabble, Tiddlywinks, and many others. It's sort of like when a supreme being speaks and each listener believes the words were spoken directly to him in his native language. Ok, it's not exactly like that, but I had you going there. Seriously though, communities surrounding all sorts of competitive games do face the exact same issues.

Now that the overtly self-congratulatory portion of the article is over, let's move on to those who had disagreements and questions about "Playing to Win."

The Objections

There were some who objected to the entire notion of playing to win. Here are representative samples of their views:

"But I really have a tactic that wins every time! Tower rushing in Warcraft 3 [or camping in Unreal Tournament, or whatever else]. It's not that I'm a scrub, but the game is more fun when I don't use that tactic and when I play against others who also don't use it."

Bad news for you. You are a scrub. You can't e-mail me and claim not to be a scrub, yet exemplify the only pre-requisite! (Well you can, but please don't.) What's worse is that the tactics stated are always tactics I know for a fact not to be "too good." Does tower rushing win every Warcraft 3 tournament? No. Are all the best Unreal Tournament players hardcore campers (players who sit in one spot on the map)? No. Then what are you complaining about? Learn the counter to the strategy. If there is no counter (there is a 99.9% that there is, but you don't know about it), then enter some tournaments, win them all and prove it. If you manage to do that, then fine, you've exposed the game as a degenerate one that you should probably no longer play. Otherwise, expand your horizons and learn more about the game. I suppose you could continue to play your homemade version of the game against other scrubs, but I think you'd be missing out.

"What about using the map hack in Starcraft, or a packet interceptor, or a macro to cast your spells faster, or a server that enforces no camping in a first person shooter, or just a swift kick to the shins of your opponent?"

First let's address the smarty-pants questions, then get to the heart of the issue. One of the great things about playing to win is that it's a path of self-improvement that can be measured. Becoming a better cook is also path of self-improvement, but it's more subjective and much more difficult to measure. In playing to win, we have the cold, hard results of winning and losing to guide us. I think it's only useful to consider winning and losing in the context of formal competition, such as tournaments. Kicking your opponents in the shins is outside the scope of the game, and is not legal in any reasonable tournament.

Likewise, any 3rd party program obtained from an illegal warez site and installed as a hack into your game is also not going to be legal in any reasonable tournament. These things, though technically useful to those trying to win, are outside the path of continuous self-improvement that I'm talking about. You should use any *tournament legal* means to win. If you participate in some strange tournament where all players are allowed to use a map hack, then go for it. You're playing a rather weird, non-standard version of the game, though, which defeats the whole purpose of shedding extra rules so as to play the same game as everyone else. Any reasonable person would consider "no cheating from outside the game" to be part of the default rule-set of any game.

Things outside the scope of the game are usually banned.
Leave your narcotic analgesics at home, kids.

The case of a server that monitors camping (sitting in one place too long) in a first person shooter, is a little more interesting. It meets the very important criteria for a ban of strict enforceability (players need no friendly agreement; the server knows exactly who breaks the rule and hands out a penalty). I think it fails on two other counts, though.

1) The tactic of camping is almost certainly not a game-breaking tactic, so it has no place being banned in the first place.

2) If it were a game-breaking tactic, it's just too hard to fairly monitor. If camping is defined as staying within one zone for 3 minutes, and if it really is the best tactic, then sitting that zone for 2 minutes 59 seconds becomes the best tactic.

A ban must be enforceable, warranted, and concrete (or discrete). The last requirement is really just part of the first, I suppose. Imagine that repeating a certain sequence of 5 moves over and over is the best tactic in a game. Further suppose that doing so is "taboo" and that players want to ban it. There is no concrete definition of exactly what must be banned. Can players do 3 repetitions of the 5 moves? What about 2 reps? What about 1? What about repeating the first 4 moves and omitting the 5th? Is that ok? The game becomes a test of who is willing to play as close as possible to the "taboo tactic" without breaking the (arbitrary) letter of the law defining the tactic.

Some games have it easier than others when it comes to banning. In the card game Magic: the Gathering, it's easy to create an enforceable, discrete ban. "Card X is now illegal. If you have card X in your deck, you are disqualified." The tough part there is whether the ban is actually warranted.

Street Fighter Again!

Speaking of banning, forgive my tangent into the world of Street Fighter. In the 10 year history of the 30 different versions of the game, there has only been one banning issue which had any serious debate: the issue of "roll canceling" in Capcom vs. SNK 2 (CvS2). So-called "roll canceling"is a bug-exploit that allows a player to cancel a ground roll within the first 5/60ths of a second into any special or super move, retaining the invulnerability of roll during the special or super. Let's try that again. Roll canceling is a bug requiring difficult timing that allows a player to have many invulnerable moves that the game designers never intended.

Some people claimed that players would never master roll canceling. That was just foolish, so I'll pretend I never heard that. Players will master anything that will help them win. Some players claimed that if you can beat person A, but not person B, and both A and B learn to roll cancel, that you will still beat A but not B. Others believed that even if the game ended up being all about roll canceling vs. roll canceling, that there would still be a game. Others, including myself, believed that roll canceling would ruin the game, making it degenerately unplayable. The actual results are amusing.

On August 9-11, 2002, we held the largest fighting game tournament ever in the United States. 20 players from Japan attended and CvS2 was one of the 3 primary tournament games. Most American players did not learn to roll cancel (including myself, I did not take the game seriously). Most Japanese players did. The 7th and 8th place finishers were from the US; the top 6 finishers were all Japanese. The player who won the tournament, Tokido of Japan, played Blanka and Honda(!?), using nothing but roll cancelled invulnerable versions of their self-projectile moves. This tactic absolutely destroyed the #1 US player (who even used roll canceling himself!), and the other Japanese finalist, who was clearly the better player. The "better player" just never got a chance to actually do anything during entire the set of games since the roll cancelled Blanka ball seemed unbeatable.

Should roll canceling be banned? I'm pretty sure it meets the standard of "warranted" since I'm satisfied that under serious tournament conditions, the game completely fell apart into a joke. Unfortunately, the ban would be practically unenforceable, since roll cancelled moves are exceedingly hard to actually detect or prove. I should note that many top players of the game believe that the tactic creates a different, but non-degenerate game, so it should not be banned. Ha!

Whew, we made it through more Street Fighter mumbo-jumbo. Back to the complaints!

"But playing hard against beginners (or my girlfriend) is mean. I play down to their level so it will be close."

This one is tough. Many people presented elaborate situations which were basically equivalent to them being stuck on a desert island with only one video game and one opponent who is doomed never to improve and claimed that it is more fun not to play to win since it would always be a blowout. In such a case, I suppose I concede the point.

 

Apparently, several of my readers are in this situation. But what about a case where you have ready access to a variety of opponents? I'll present the case of legendary Street Fighter player Thomas Osaki (darn, back to that game again). I did not actually play with Thomas during his heyday, but I have since met him and I hope he forgives any misrepresentation of his conduct during his glory years.

Thomas Osaki dominated the game of Street Fighter in Northern California. His reputation for "playing to win" was quite extreme. They say he never really engaged in "casual play," but rather always played his hardest, as if every game had something on the line or was a serious tournament. They say he played this way regardless of his opponent, even if his opponent was a 9 year-old girl with no skill at the game. He would "stutter step, throw" her like all the rest (a particularly "cheap" tactic). Did he have no compassion at all? Was he just a jerk? I like to think of Thomas (or his legend, in case it happens not to be true) not as mean player, but as an inspiring player. He set a bar of excellence. In his path of self-improvement, he was not willing to compromise, to embrace mediocrity, or to give less than his all at any time. His peers had the extraordinary opportunity to experience brilliant play whenever he was near, not just at rare moments in a tournament.

And what of the 9 year-old girl? Perhaps she had no business playing in the first place. From Thomas's view, getting her off the machine allowed him to face the opponents he "should" be facing anyway.

*pause for hate-mail*

Because I'm psychic, I can tell that you violently object to the above, and that you have three specific grievances:

1) "I can't play that way, because if I did, and even if I believed it was the best path to self-improvement, I DON'T have a steady stream of opponents in the game I play. I have a limited audience and playing that way, or playing to win at all, alienates them so I am forced to tone it down."

2) "If everyone played that way, no one would ever be able to learn the game."

3) "There are better things in life than winning. You are just a rude bully."

On the fist point--yeah. You got me. If playing your hardest prevents your opponents from playing you, and you have access to only a very few opponents, I guess you're stuck. Sorry. Too bad you don't play Warcraft 3 or some internet game with endless opponents. You will be unable to improve past a certain point, so make the best of it, find more opponents, or play a different game.

On the second point, I guess you got me again. You, the expert player, are powerful in the narrow domain of whichever game you play. How will you use that power? Perhaps you will judge who is worthy to be taught the secret knowledge and who is to be dispatched quickly. Perhaps you will take one of the two extremes, and either defeat all or nurture all. No matter what you do, I am strongly in favor of you passing on your wisdom and passion to other players. It's no "fun" being good at an esoteric game with no players, so it is even to your advantage to train and mentor new players. But beware--all training and no "real playing" can weaken you. Thomas "trained" his peers by exemplifying excellence, setting an inspiring standard. But what is the "moral" thing to do? Does morality matter in this context?

This whole area is far beyond the scope of my ability to advise. It all comes down to what your goal really is. To improve yourself? To improve others? To win? To have "fun"?

We need to take about 100 steps back and remember what the whole point of "playing to win" was in the first place. It's certainly not about beating 9 year-old girls at Street Fighter.

The Whole Point

Imagine a majestic mountain nirvana of gaming. At its peak are fulfillment, "fun", and even transcendence. Most people could care less about this mountain peak, because they have other life issues that are more important to them, and other peaks to pursue. There are few, though, who are not at this peak, but who would be very happy there. These are the people I'm talking to. Some of them don't need any help; they're on the journey. Most, though, only believe they are on that journey but actually are not. They got stuck in a chasm at the mountain's base, a land of scrubdom. Here they are imprisoned in their own mental constructs of made up game rules. If they could only cross this chasm, they would discover either a very boring plateau (for a degenerate game) or the heavenly enchanted mountain peak (for a "deep" game). In the former case, crossing the chasm would teach them to find a different mountain with more fulfilling rewards. In the latter case, well, they'd just be happier. All "playing to win" was supposed to be is the process of shedding the mental constructs that trap players in the chasm who would be happier at the mountain peak.

You could be up there. I don't think there's any internet connections up there, though.

This brings us to point 3 from way back ("there are more things to life than winning"). A lot of people get rubbed the wrong way by this stuff because they think I want to apply "playing to win" to everyone. I don't. It's not that I think everyone should or would want to be on that peak. There are other peaks in life, probably better ones. But those who are stuck in the chasm really should know their positions and how to reach a happier place.

Thanks for all the responses.

--Sirlin

Playing to Win, Part 1

I 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

Playing to Win Example: Richard Hatch on Survivor

Survivor was a 13 part television series on CBS in which 16 people were voluntarily marooned a desert island. Every 3 days they’d vote someone off the island until there was only one left…who would win $1 million. I’m sure you’ve heard of this.

I only half-heartedly watched the series during its first run, but I watched it very closely when it was replayed during the Olympics. (I find the Olympics and physical sports not strategically interesting.)  I found Survivor to be a huge, blazing advertisement for Playing to Win. The community on that island so closely mirrored my Street Fighter community that I was shocked. There was one expert player and 15 “scrubs.” Richard Hatch, the winner of Survivor, was the only participant who really even played the game at all. He put it best when he said towards the end, “I arrived on this island at the same time as everyone else. We all saw the sign that said ‘Survivor—outwit—outplay—outlast.’ That’s what I’ve been trying to do since before I even got here, and the other 15 people seemed to think they were on vacation.”

The Game

Let’s take a strategic look at Survivor before we talk about Richard. There is only one reasonable, logical way to hope to win such a game. There are not two ways. There are not three ways. There is ONE way: to form a voting alliance. At first, the 16 players are divided into 2 teams of 8. Every 3 days, the teams face each other in competitions called “immunity challenges.” The losing team must vote a member off. After 6 players were voted off, the teams merged, forming a single 10 person team. At this point, the immunity challenges were individual competitions, not team efforts. The individual who won such a challenge would be immune from being voted off during the next voting period.

Again, the obvious way to win this game is to form a voting alliance. If you have teammates with whom you coordinate your vote, then you have both the guarantee that their votes won’t go towards you, and the power to concentrate your votes on a single opponent. The whims of other players’ votes are sometimes hard to predict, but the more people you have in your alliance, the better you can control who to vote off. By doing this, you control the game. Now, you don’t want too many people (too difficult to manage, and not self serving enough anyway). Yet you don’t want too few (not enough voting power). An optimal number for a game of 16 people might be 4. Once those 4 become the final 4, they should amicably dissolve the alliance and each try to win. This was Rich’s plan.

The Players

Richard Hatch: Survivor winner, tax-paying loser.A four person voting alliance was not something Rich stumbled into; it was his plan all along, starting before he ever set foot on the island. Not a single other player had even considered such a thing. The other players reacted in classic scrub fashion to Rich’s plan, calling it “no fun.” I was just waiting for someone to call it “cheap.” The other players were bound up by their own made-up rules of honor—rules the game has no knowledge of. The game knows nothing but winning and losing. One player said, “It’s no fun to sit around and get picked off one by one by an alliance. If that’s the way the game is going to be, then I don’t want to play.” Good. Get off. Why did you show up in the first place if not to win?

 Jenna's kids will be really proud that her mother lost.One player, Jenna, said that she didn’t want to be part of an alliance because she wanted her young daughters to watch the show and be proud of her mother when they got older. The supposition here is that she is somehow ethically bound to play in a sloppy, non-strategic way. Rich’s response was, “Jenna should make her kids proud by showing that she can WIN. She should be concerned with showing them ‘look kids, mommy has the will to win and this is how you do it.’”

 Rudy's homophobic and a bit of a biggot, but he's old so he's loveable.Rudy was an interesting player. He initially found Rich’s alliance to be somehow dishonorable, but he joined anyway and he gave his word. Above all else, Rudy keeps his word. Three episodes later, he told the camera that he had “turned 180 degrees,” saying that he now believes that the alliance is absolutely necessary and that he’ll stick with it until the end. When Rudy was eventually voted off, his parting words to future Survivor players were, “Forming an alliance is the only way to win this game.” Yet I believe that Rudy was incredibly lucky that his nature (being true to his word) was exactly in line with what happened to be an important quality to have in the game. After all, if one is to be in an alliance, one must be trustworthy. Rudy had no superior grasp of playing competitive games, but at least he was able to see reason when Rich explained the alliance.

 If only Colleen had acted earlier.Another notable player was Colleen. She saw her own defeat coming. She saw the alliance. She saw she wasn’t in it. She saw that the alliance had the power to vote her and every other non-aligned member off. Her conclusion? To form her own alliance. This was exactly the right response, but a case of too little, too late. Rich said, “I find it amusing that people are so naïve as to think they can start playing strategically at this very late stage of the game. It’s far too late to start now.” In fact, Colleen banded the 3 votes together, and might have gotten Kelly’s crucial 4th swing vote, but failed.

 Gervase thought alliances were cheap...at first.Gervase was another true scrub. He initially renounced alliances saying that he’d never play that way. It’s cheap, you know. Once his fate was sealed and he would clearly lose to the alliance, only then did Colleen change Gervase’s tune. He said, “Well, we got a new strategy, going to try a something new.” He was all excited. He was talking about Colleen’s alliance. He was a scrub. Scrubs often delight in feeling innovative and original when they latch on to better player’s superior tactics when it’s far too late to matter.

Brilliant Strategy

It was the last episode of Survivor, though, that really showed what competitive games were all about. Rich’s forfeit of the last immunity challenge was the most brilliant move played during the 39 day game. With 3 players left, the final immunity challenge was simply to stand up and keep touching a wooden idol. It would go on for hours and hours until two gave up and one was left. The winner would cast the single vote to remove one of the two losing players. The final two players would then stand before a jury of 9 of their previous colleagues. The jury would decide the winner.

Rich was in a tough spot here, with remaining players Rudy and Kelly. He had a deal with Rudy that they would stick together until the very end. They agreed that if either of them won the challenge, they’d vote Kelly off the island and go to the finals together. The problem is that Rich was well aware that he’d lose the grand prize if he went to the panel of 9 judges against Rudy. Rich was seen as slimy and Rudy, though a bigot, was well liked. If Rudy won the immunity challenge, he’d take Rich to the final 2, but Rich would still lose. That’s no good.

If Rich wins the immunity challenge, he’s stuck. He can’t take Rudy with him to the final 2 (since Rudy would win the final popularity vote), but has to take him (they had an agreement). Rich would be forced to break the agreement and vote Rudy off. Unfortunately, that means he’d lose Rudy’s vote (in retaliation) in the finals. In fact, he might even lose more votes since breaking an agreement is a slimy thing to do.

That leaves only one possibility: Kelly must win. If she wins, her gut instinct will be to vote off Rich (she hates him) and go to the finals with Rudy. Unfortunately for her, she’d lose the finals by a landslide to Rudy. Rich’s gamble is that Kelly, scrubby as she is, is not dumb enough to go to the finals against Rudy. And if she votes off Rudy and goes to the finals with Rich (her smartest option) then she’s done Rich’s dirty work for him. Rich is in the final 2 with Kelly (just like he wanted) and he never had to break his agreement with Rudy, so he’ll still have Rudy’s vote in the end. Kelly had already proven her ability to win such immunity challenges, so it was fairly certain she’d beat Rudy if Rich just conceded. Even if by fluke Rudy won the immunity challenge, he’d still take Rich to the final 2. So Rich took the gamble and took his hand off the idol on purpose, hoping Kelly would win—and she did. It all worked out exactly like he planned.

Kelly: Star Athlete, Star Scrub

Kelly, scrub to the very end, remarked that Rich claimed he had some reason for removing his hand, but that she knew his arm was just tired.

Kelly just never figured it out.But Kelly would have her final moment being the queen scrub. In the finals between Rich and Kelly, they were each allowed to give opening statements of why the jury of previously voted-off players should vote for them. Kelly was a pillar of inspiration to scrubs everywhere when she explained that people should vote for the best person, “not based on how they played the game.” As a scrub, she had her own made-up rules of the game that the game itself knew nothing about. She was “more honorable” and “a better friend” or other rubbish.

Rich responded by taking the exactly opposite stance, as he well should. He said that entire purpose of coming to this island was to play this game. Kelly asked for votes based on friendship, but that’s not what the votes should be based on. Friendship is great and worthwhile, but it’s not purpose of the game called Survivor. The purpose of the game is to win. The best player of the game maximizes his chances of winning at all times. In this case, that meant forming an alliance, which Rich did. Rich was basically asking the jury to leg go their mental construct of made-up rules and see the game for what it really was. He asked them to choose the player who played to win. And they did.

More Games

If the players of Survivor 2 actually learned the lessons of Survivor 1 and of competitive games in general, then things will get very messy, indeed. They’ll all try to form 4 person voting alliances. If at least two such alliances emerge, then the optimal move is to align two of the alliances to get rid everyone else. Then the 8 will compete as 4 vs 4. Then the remaining 4 would do well to have already planned partners of 2 or 3. This strategy of the shrinking alliance, though (I believe) optimal, is an incredibly tricky thing to manage in actual practice. As I said…it will be messy.

Anyway, Rich may be many things, but he is, at least, an excellent player of competitive games. It’s so telling that he was able to beat Gervase in a variety of card games Rich had never even played. I'd love to see how Rich would play other competitive games because I think he would demonstrate that there's a skill that runs underneath all competitive games that is transferable from game to game.

--Sirlin

Yomi Layer 3: Knowing the Mind of the Opponent

This is not really how Yomi works.Yomi is the Japanese word reading, as in reading the mind of the opponent. If you can condition your enemy to act in a certain way, you can then use his own instincts against him (a concept from the martial art of Judo). Paramount in the design of competitive games is the guarantee to the player that if he knows what his enemy will do, there is some way to counter it.

What happens, though, when your enemy knows that you know what he will do? He needs a way to counter you. He's said to be on another level than you, or another "Yomi Layer." You knew what he would do (yomi), but he knew that you knew (Yomi Layer 2). What happens when you know that he knows that you know what he will do (Yomi Layer 3)? You'll need a way to counter his counter. And what happens when he knows that you know....

Sound like a joke that could never happen in real gameplay of an actual game? Surprise: it's quite common in strategy games. The reason has to do with conditioning the opponent and the inequality of risk/reward in these guessing games (see my article on Rock, Paper, and Scissors in Strategy Games).

Before we get into how ordinary human minds can become entangled in complicated guessing games, let's look at what needs to be there to create these guessing games at all. The designer's tendency might be to create moves and counters. Then create counters to counters, then counters to counters to counters, then counters to those, and so on. Actually, a game need only support counters up to Yomi Layer 3, since Yomi Layer 4 can loop around back to Yomi Layer 0.

Let's say I have a move (we'll call it "m") that's really, really good. I want to do it all the time. (Here's where the inequality of risk/reward comes in. If all my moves are equally good, this whole thing falls apart.) The "level 0" case here is discovering how good that move is and doing it all the time. Then, you will catch on and know that I'm likely to do that move a lot (Yomi Layer 1), so you'll need a counter move (we'll call it "c1"). You've stopped me from doing m. You've shut me down. I need a way to stop you from doing c1. I need a counter to your counter, or "c2."

Now you don't know what to expect from me anymore. I might do m, or I might do c2. Interestingly, I probably want to do m, but I just do c2 to scare you into not doing c1 anymore. Then I can sneak in more m.

You don't have adequate choices yet. I can alternate between m and c2, but all you have is c1. You need a counter to c2, which we'll call c3. Now we each have two moves.

Me: m, c2
You: c1, c3.

Now I need a counter to c3. The tendency might be to create a c4 move, but it's not necessary. The move m can serve as my c4. Basically, if you expect me to do my counter to your counter (rather than my original good move m), then I don't need a counter that; I can just do go ahead and do the original move...if the game is designed that way. Basically, supporting moves up Yomi Layer 3 is the minimum set of counters needed have a complete set of options, assuming Yomi Layer 4 wraps around back to Layer 0.

This is surely sounding much more confusing than it is, so let's look at an actual example from Virtua Fighter 3 (which will almost certainly confuse you even more).

Example of Yomi Layer 3 from Virtua Fighter 3

Let's say Akira knocks down Pai. As Pai gets up, she can either do a rising attack (these attacks have the absolute highest priority in the game) or she can do nothing. A high rising attack will stop any attack that Akira does as she gets up, but if Akira expects this, he can block and retaliate with a guaranteed throw. Pai does the rising kick and Akira predicts this and blocks. Now the guessing game begins.

Akira would like to do his most damaging throw (that's his m), and be done with it. Even though the throw is guaranteed here, all throws can be escaped for zero damage if the defender expects the throw and enters the throw reverse command. The throw is guaranteed to start but Pai might reverse it. In fact, Pai is well aware that a throw is guaranteed here (it's common knowledge), and it's only obvious that Akria will do his most damaging throw. After all, this situation has happened a hundred times before against a hundred Akiras and they all do the same thing. It's really conditioning, not strategy, that tells Pai she needs to do a throw escape here (that's her c1). In fact, it will become her natural, unthinking reaction after a while.

Akira is tired of having his throw escaped again and again. He decides to be tricky by doing one of his very powerful moves such as a double palm, a reverse body check, a two fisted strike, or a shoulder ram (we'll just lump all those into c2). Why does a big, slow move work in this situation? First of all, if Pai does her throw escape and there is no throw to escape, the escape becomes a throw attempt. If her opponent is out of range or otherwise unthrowable for some reason, her throw attempt becomes a throw whiff. She grabs the air and is vulnerable for a moment. One important rule in VF is that you cannot throw an opponent during the startup phase or the hitting phase of a move. So if Akira does a big, powerful move, he is totally unthrowable until after the hitting phase of the move is over and he enters recovery (retracting his arm or leg).

 Years after this article was written, a newer version of Akira still wants to do a throw ("m"), but instead opts for Double Palm ("c2").

Back to our story. Akira is tired of getting his throw escaped all day, so he does standard counter to any throw: a big, powerful move. This c2 move does a decent amount of damage, by the way. The next time this whole situation arises, Pai doesn't know what to do. Her instincts tell her to reverse the throw, but if she does, she is vulverable to Akira's powerful move. Rather than go for the standard reverse, Pai does her c3 move: she simply blocks. By blocking, she'll take no damage from the Akira's powerful move, and depending on exactly which move it was, she'll probably be able to retaliate.

So what does Akira do if he expects this? In fact, he needs no c4 move since his original throw (m) is the natural counter to a blocking opponent. A throw is a special kind of move that grabs an enemy and does damage regardless of whether they are blocking. It's specifically designed to be used against an opponent in block who is afraid of an attack.

In summary,

Akira has: throw; powerful move.
Pai has: throw escape; block.

As I tried to show, it's actually pretty reasonable to expect players to be thinking on Yomi Layer 3, 4 or even higher. It's because conditioning makes doing the throw escape an unthinking, natural reaction. But against a clever opponent, you'll have to think twice about doing a standard throw escape, or blocking. The Akira player will do the occasional powerful, slow move just to put his enemy off balance and abandon his instinct to escape the throw. Then Akira can go back to his original goal: land the throw.

Another very interesting property is "beginner's luck." Notice that a beginner Akira in this situation will go for the throw, since that works on other beginners who haven't learned to throw escape. The beginner Akira will never land the throw on an intermediate player, though, since the intermediate player knows to always throw escape. But strangely, the beginner will sometimes land the throw on the expert, since the expert is aware of the whole guessing game and might block rather than throw escape. Of course, the expert will soon learn that beginner is, in fact, a beginner and then he'll be able to yomi almost every move.

Just as a final note on Virtua Fighter to further demonstrate the complexity of its guessing games, I actually greatly simplified the example above. I left out, for example, that Pai could attack with a fast move rather than block. And Akira has another c2 move besides a slow, powerful move. He can also do what's called a "kick-guard cancel" or "kg." This means he can press kick, which will make him unthrowable until his kick reaches recovery phase. If Pai tries to throw, she'll whiff. But then Akira can cancel the kick before it even gets to the hitting phase. Now he's free to act and take advantage of Pai's whiffed throw vulnerability. Now, Akira has a guaranteed throw, putting him back in the exact same situation he began in.

This paper clip guy always seems to know exactly what people are thinking.

The catch is that if Akira does kg-cancel and then goes for the throw he originally wanted to do, Pai will probably not have time to react with a throw escape. It's just too fast. She'd have to be on the next yomi layer. She'd have to expect Akira to throw, enter a throw escape, see the kg-cancel, then immediately enter her next guess (probably an attack or throw escape). Any hesitation and she'd be thrown.

Suddenly forcing the opponent to think on the next yomi layer than were expecting is usually a way to blind them. Even if the opponent was ready for the guessing game I described above, if you do the "kg" trick and suddenly force a new guessing game they weren't ready for, they are likely to do an automatic response that's easy to predict becase they won't have the time or presence of mind to do anything else.

The point I'm making here is that despite Virtua Fighter's absurd complexity, players really are able to think on the levels I'm hinting at. Playing such a game and successfully landing a move because you knew he knew you knew he would do a particular move is the greatest feeling in the world. So design counters and counters-to-counters, and so on, but know that making Yomi Layer 4 the same as Layer 0 allows you to only design counters up to Yomi Layer 3.