UC Berkeley Starcraft Class, Week 1
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 9:45PM 
A screenshot of how StarCraft looked early in development.Tonight I attended the much-talked-about StarCraft class at UC Berkeley as an observer. (Insert StarCraft joke about Observers.)
The main lecturer is the young Alan Feng. Mr. Feng is a physics student who says he's been playing StarCraft "for 2.5 years, 6 months on the pro level." He also had help leading the class from a guy named Yosh (I forget his real name, but I call people by their chosen names anyway), and a third guy who I only remember as Mumbling Guy. I would call Feng by his gaming name too, but I forgot what it was because he only said it once.
Feng and Yosh are an interesting contrast. Feng is endearingly highfalutin while Yosh is an old-timer (StarCraft-wise) who tells the young-uns how it used to be. Feng began the class this way:
There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard.
There are not more than five primary colors, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen.
There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of them yield more flavors than can ever be tasted.
In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack: the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers.
--Sun Tzu
And he added:
In Starcraft, there are only three races, but more gameplay remaining than can be explored.
There was then a long stretch of administrative debris about notecards we were to turn in, about what percentage of the final grade the homework is worth, and other such banalities. Notably though, 40% of the final grade comes from the final project where students must attempt to make a new contribution to the StarCraft community in the form of an analysis of some part of the game. These final papers will be public and subject to peer review--no doubt incredibly merciless peer review, given the tone of most gaming communities.
Feng then gave us a short history lesson about the release of StarCraft. It was announced in 1995, though it didn't release until 1997. Feng showed us graphs and stats of how many people had computers back then, what power they were, how many had internet access, and so on. His point was that StarCraft had a dramatically larger chance for success in 1997 than it did in 1995, so their delay was fortuitous.
As an aside, I'll point out that this involved Microsoft Powerpoint slides. One student asked if the slides would be available and Feng said no, that the slides don't contain anything useful except pictures anyway. That's an interesting statement and he's right. I hope presenters will learn that Powerpoint slides are a generally terrible way of conveying information. Especially if they have terrible typography and blocky graphs as these did. (Apple Keynote can at least look nice.) But whatever, let's move on.
Yosh then gave us 20 or 25 minutes of reminiscing about the history of the best StarCraft players. Almost everyone he mentioned is Korean, of course. I felt I had something in common with Yosh as he told us he's been playing and following his game for 10 years now, competing in tournaments and trying to improve.
He explained how various players evolved or changed the game. Boxer's initial dominance gave hope for Terran players in the early days. In fact, when asked who in the room is a Terran player because of Boxer, several students raised their hands. (Nerdy joke: is Boxer overpowered in every game?) Apparently Boxer went to the army for 2 years, and although he didn't get to play as much there, he still did play and the army cadets created a special army StarCraft team, just so he could keep playing. When he returned to the game, he made up for his generally weaker game by becoming much more bold, and pulling off insane strategies that no one else would use, like a fake base in the middle of the map.
Yosh told us about the personalities of several players. One of them he said never smiles or frowns or makes any expression at all...except for the one in the picture he showed us. Another has bravado, another was extremely effeminate. Some were known for their micro-management skills, others for their creativity, others for their consistency. One top player is called "cheater Terran" because he always seems to have more units than you'd think he'd be able to at any given time. It seems that "every gaming community is a weird mirror image of every other gaming community."
After this walk down memory lane of Korean Starcraft champions, Yosh let Feng take over for the last leg of the lecture. Feng talked about the different kinds of resources in the game. There are raw resources, which he defines as those that the Starcraft game construct knows about. Minerals, gas, population limit, creep/pylon fields, energy (for casting psionic storm, etc). There are also physical resources, which he defines as things outside the game that exist in the physical world (perhaps a misnomer?). These are things like attention (arguably the most important one in StarCraft), APM: actions per minute (arguably the one that a supposed strategy game should NOT focus on at all), physical endurance, state of mind, knowledge of the game, analysis, etc. I asked him to add yomi to the list, the ability to read the opponent's mind. He did not know the term, but I had earlier given him my book, so I'm sure he will soon. Yes he said, ability to read the opponent is another resource to draw on that exists outside the game construct.
Then there are what Feng calls transformational resources. These are things you convert raw or physical resources into other resources. The most common one is simply your "army." You use your APM (clicking speed skills) along with minerals and gas and time, and you convert all that into units that compose your army. That army is capable of taking over territory or killing enemy units or defending a new expansions, etc.
Feng's point here is a good one. He's trying to get the students to think of the game as a big collection of resources and your decisions are about how to shift those resources around. It's easy to overlook how many resources are really involved in a decision, and if you overlook some, you aren't understanding the real implications of your decision. For example, if your population limit is 131/131, what do you do? As it stands, you cannot build more units. Should you build pylons? That means spending minerals and time. Should you attack with units you already have? That means spending units and possibly more of your attention resource. How long will it take the units to attack and trade with the enemy units? Did you scout enough to know what you'll be up against and what important thing you could attack?
Another example he gave was using raw resources to cover for a lack of physical resources. If you have very bad reaction time and you know this, then you are aware that in a surprise attack on your peons (resource gatherers), you might lose more than you really should. It might be worth it to spend minerals to build some cannons back there so that less depends on your slower reaction time. It's a tradeoff that might be worth it depending on your particular play skills.
The last example he gave was that of defending a choke point. If you control a choke point and put some cannons near it, but the enemy does not attack there, what have you spent and what have you gained? You spent time and minerals of course, but Feng was saying we shouldn't be so hasty in saying that we gained nothing. We did gain some resources here. If there is a pylon there, we increased our population limit. We also have vision to that part of the map. That means we have slightly better overall information about where the enemy is (or isn't, in this case). We prevented the enemy from scouting here, so the enemy has a slightly worse mental picture of the map. We control some territory that might not otherwise control (whatever is behind the choke point). So really there are a lot of resources to consider here, even in this very simple example where no one even attacked anyone.
And that was it for week one. A class about StarCraft at UC Berkeley.
--Sirlin
Reader Comments (238)
There would probably still be development (as in new things would be discovered - ie permanent mutalisk stacking was a recently - <2 years - development that totally changed every zerg matchup), but there wouldn't be room for one person to out-pace anyone else, or at least not nearly as much room. I don't think there would really be any "micro moves" that one progamer could do but another couldn't - I don't really think there are very many now either :P
About the street fighter example.. I don't want want to make too many assumptions as I'm fairly novice when it comes to fighting games (even though I like them), but would you say perhaps that it's similiar in mechanics to micro in an RTS? So, if you were to implement this 250 apm cap, we'd probably still see high level micro but without the possibility of someone going 1 step further. Doing whatever maneuver while also keeping up production or dropping in 2 places instead of one etc.
Like, a fighter is a more localized setting - at 250 apm there's probably no *individual* micro maneuver you can't do in an RTS (and probably the same for a fighter), but you can't (for example) be like "ok while we are fighting I'm gonna drop two of your bases". Or "I'm gonna simultaneously drop 3 bases at once" (has happened).
So the skillset of a fighter probably comes more from personal interaction with your opponent (I guess I'm referring to what you call Yomi) while I guess SC is more like.. trying to play 2 matches at once vs an opponent doing the same thing.. Ah I don't know how good that analogy turned out :P
About the lower end of the APM spectrum I just want to clarify that I think we need to be sure there is something else to do, as you say; something that facilitates aggressive gameplay (multiple front battles etc). For instance, if we were to just patch MBS and autotmining into SC I think it would have a negative impact (even aside from the fact that it's been balanced around those two features not being in the game).
If we are gonna remove depth (even if it's "just" click fast depth - which I don't find offensive btw, I don't mind SC being part 100 m dash and part chess :P) there should be new depth added, preferably a hybrid click fast/think fast depth.
A couple of points I would like to add.
1) I keep seeing things like "let us have our game" or things like that. I don't think anyone wants to change Starcraft right now. Starcraft has several successful leagues, an incredible fan base, and playability options no matter where you live.
2) With that in mind, remember that theory is theory. Nothing can truly be proven without testing it in tourney conditions over time. What may seem like a good idea could turn out to be a horrible one under all circumstances. What may actually be a bad idea might somehow become a new revolutionary mechanic. These things are impossible to predict accurately.
So with points 1 and 2 in mind, please stop posting like some new idea will destroy the community, or that something is a flat-out ridiculous suggestion when it's never truly been tested. It's okay to disagree and provide reasons why. Just don't go overboard.
In conclusion, I'd like to add 3) APM should be a result and not a goal.
APM to me is a direct result of the interface and what all your units can do. If something can be done to make the interface easier and reduce APM, that's a good thing. It's a good thing to make the interface easier, not to reduce APM necessarily. Likewise having units be adaptable and having several applications will likely increase the APM needed to use them at their highest potential. It's a good thing to add to the strategy and options, the increased APM is just a result of that.
So I don't think APM should remain high just for APM's sake. Likewise I don't think it's a good idea to remove options and freedom just to lower the APM. A high APM should come as the result of a well-made game in the hands of a talented and experienced player, and not have anything to do with restrictions. Likewise, to play the game as simply as possible (and that level will certainly be debated, but I'm making a general point) should require as little APM as necessary, and the players can build on that as they choose.
NoAPM I can't get the link to work. I get to the site but the video won't play. Any suggestions?
There are 2 play buttons, one in the center and one in the sort of player interface - for me it only works when I click the interface one (iirc). Might need to refresh page if you already tried the other one.
At least that's how it was for me, their player is kinda meh ;p
This is why you should never argue with SC players. They really are the gaming equivalent of religious people. Their whole life they've played one game and they can't comprehend anything different or new.
Classic example: "I don't think there would really be any "micro moves" that one progamer could do but another couldn't - I don't really think there are very many now either :P". Starcraft doesn't have this possibility therefore no game possibly could! Because Starcraft is the best game ever!
And yet in Warcraft 3 this is 100% the case. There's many micro moves that one progamer can do and others can't. Some are good at surround micro, some at blocking micro, some at staff micro, some at shoot and run micro, etc.; but noone is the best at all of them. And almost all the micro moves are quite unrelated to APM and more related to precise timing, knowledge, geometric pattern recognition, reflexes and yomi.
I'm not trying to say anything about how SC2 should play, just proving that this type of mechanic is completely possible.
making execution easier doesn't make the game better, more fun, or deeper, it just makes the game easier which more often than not leads to the game having a shorter lifespan. and in response to sirlin's reductio ad absurdum arguments, this doesn't mean making starcraft's UI even worse would make it better. it was designed around those limitations and it retains its magic after so many years partly BECAUSE OF those limitations. look at original Super Turbo, which is a really difficult game to learn. it's still popular and the Japanese completely ignore HD Remix - I wonder why?
sirlin - why not apply "Playing to Win" to game design? The scrubs aren't going to evolve into good players no matter how mechanically easy you make the game due to their mental limitations, so why bother? Just design a game with a certain level of difficulty in execution and focus on making the game deep/strategic/fun/etc from there.... don't talk about "improving" an existing game such as starcraft as if the difficulty is some kind of stain that needs to be erased.
APM is about as important to competitive SC at this point as minerals and gas.
" the Japanese completely ignore HD Remix - I wonder why?"
Because... it hasn't been released in Japan yet?
@siv: "making execution easier doesn't make the game better, more fun, or deeper, it just makes the game easier..."
I see what you're trying to say here but you need to rethink it. Even assuming that all top players are able to execute basically anything the game has to offer nearly 100% of the time (which they don't), making execution easier still would allow more people to play at the top level. This means a wider range of ideas brought into top level games and thus a deeper game (well meta game really but still).
"... leads to the game having a shorter lifespan."
Easier execution shortens a game's lifespan if it's solvable. I think it's safe to assume Starcraft isn't. It might end up being optimized but that would mean the game was already optimizable and considering the lifespan on poker being optimized isn't actually a problem for a game.
"it was designed around those limitations..."
Actually, if anything it was patched around those limitations. The fact that they're choosing to remove many limitations from the game in SC2 shows that things like only being able to select 8 units weren't what they designed the game around but rather limitations they ended up having to balance around.
"...it's still popular and the Japanese completely ignore HD Remix"
Fact check next time.
"The scrubs aren't going to evolve into good players no matter how mechanically easy you make..."
You're right scrubs will never end up being good at the game, but we're not talking about scrubs. We're talking about allowing new non-scrub players get to the real game faster, we're talking about allowing players with great tactics but slightly lacking APM to become viable, we're talking about finding ways to put a limit on the advantage that high APM will grant you (since currently it seems unbounded).
"...don't talk about "improving" an existing game such as starcraft as if the difficulty is some kind of stain that needs to be erased."
The idea isn't to erase difficulty, it's to bound it. Right now there is no known limit on when APM stops granting you significant advantage. Aside from the first few minutes of the game, the returns on high APM seem to be linear where as the returns on strategy seem to be diminishing. What sirlin wants to do is limit the effective APM such that at high level play the advantage gained from increase in APM doesn't completely trump the increase gained from an improvement in strategy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJMDHh7dYjM&NR=1
It's a video of a top american player Nony commenting on his own match. At about minute 11 he says something along the lines of "...strategy is simple. Pros, for the majority of the game aren't constantly making smarter decisions, I mean there are a few key decisions but for the majority of the game the way they're separating themselves is better micro, better macro, better execution overall and you don't even need a brain for that, it's just hand speed..." this is from the same guy who in a video posted earlier in this thread claims to be opposed to Auto-Mining and MBS (http://www.scforall.com/sctv/sc_tv01.asp?mNum=s03&movNum=246). It seems to me that if both claims he makes are true then players already know that the majority of their game is mindless and that they like it that way.
IDK maybe if I think about starcraft as an e-sport first and a game second then maybe it's good that most of the game is a mindless APM challenge with a few key calls to make at various points. I suppose for a sport it's more interesting to watch if most people physically can't accomplish basic execution but for a game it's a horrible idea.
maybe this has been brought up, and the point I come with doesn't really bring the argument any closer to a consensus, but I'm a sucker for analogies and I just couldn't keep this to myself.
Hardcore SC fans are like hardcore manual-driving car fanatics, they swear by the control offered by a manual car as opposed to automatics just as SC players swear by the original's UI, or at least the necessity for unlimited apm. Now with today's advances in automotive technologies, automatics pretty much rival (and some even exceed) manual performance, but you will always have those die-hard manual afficionados who maintain that it is the only way to truly 'drive' a car. Perhaps if we could have something analogous to smg technology for cars as UI for SC.
yea I know this doens't really help the state of affairs but I just had to say it lol. Both parties have good points in my opinion; sometimes I just want to drive an automatic just as how I sometimes long to play a game that isn't so taxing on my physical being
Driving a car manually is just way more fun... Ive done both and manually is just much, much more fun.
Automatic is great for people that do not really like to drive, because obviously it takes less effort, and changes gear better/as good as the 08/15 driver.
did sirlin even get into the class? HRMMM
It took me like a whole day to read this whole thread. Damn.
So I don't play SC. I play(ed) WC3 so I can use some analogies there, and I'm at least vaguely familiar with how SC is different than WC3. Just giving my background because people seem to ask for it in this thread.
In SF, dexterity is a little different than SC. I actually get the 'frame rate limit' argument that other people made, but it was worded very poorly. Basically, the argument is that choosing to do something in SF precludes choosing to do something else for the same duration. If you commit to doing a dragon punch you cannot also commit to do a crouching forward, or a fireball. On the other hand, in SC you may choose to build many different units, build many different buildings, or make your units do many different things at the same time. Although there is the 'screen time resource' that many people above have mentioned, it still allows you to do many different things at more or less the same time with little time opportunity cost. The main time opportunity costs in SC are build times, unit movement times, and most relevant to this thread, APM. SF on the other time restricts you to doing 1 thing at a time, in most cases and you can't do something else until that one thing has resolved. This creates a sort of disconnect between people trying to compare the two.
To present a SF example, I'll point to SF4 since I am goofing off with that right now, haha. Chun-li has a bread and butter combo/blockstring in which she does a crouching short, crouching jab, crouching forward, followed by a fireball. Most of the combo is pretty lenient except for the crouching jab into the crouching forward. This portion of the combo is a '2 frame link' which means that the crouching forward only has a 1/30th of a second window in which it will combo out of the crouching jab. This is a difficult skill to a newcomer. An expert SF player can do this pretty much every time - heck, I'm not an expert and I can do it consistently. However, it is absurdly hard for a novice to do. If we gave a 'buffer window' on normals, we could eliminate this situation without changing move properties - you'd just be able to hit the forward button after the jab hits and the forward would automatically come out when it was supposed to (not cancel, just buffering the button). This would not impact strategy in SF4 at all. It would simply make it so that intermediate players could do this combo without having exact precision. It would not make the combo less strategic - you have to choose whether to do this string, or something else. But, what the APM apologists are saying is that this kind of dexterity is a good thing and that it should be in the game.
Also worth noting is that in SF, there is a maximum dexterity limit. While I suppose the game would highly degenerate if a human were able to react faster than 1/30th of a second or so, the human brain really can't do that so we have to rely mostly on intuition. The real place dexterity comes in is on combo execution, and to a lesser extent doing difficult defensive manuevers like parrying through hoyokusens (not particularly interesting). The dexterity cap on combo execution is very high, but once you get to a certain point the game engine will not let you combo any more even if your dexterity could do something more complex. Furthermore, the 'most damage you can get' is usually well within the dexterity limits of an intermediate to expert player. The APM apologists are also arguing that, if SC was SF, that you could do combos as long as you like, as long as you had the technical skill to maintain the combo. Actually, this is the case in Marvel but most people would agree that infinite combos are at least somewhat degenerate (usually very degenerate). Obviously Sirlin agrees which is why Honda/THawk don't have guaranteed corner throw loops in HDR, and why Feilong can't combo a flying kick into standing fierce into rekkas.
One of the interesting things that Company of Heroes does to reduce APM tax is lower the value of moving during battle. It is generally not a good idea to move infantry in CoH out of cover, unless you know they are going to get overrun (even then, it is often a bad idea). Because of this, you really don't want to do things like SC's manuevering 5 marines to beat their 5 marines because moving your guys gives up their defensive advantage. So one way to reduce APM tax might be to make unit fire more accurate if the units are stationary, or give them a defensive bonus. This discourages people from microing units to move around a ton to give them lots of combat advantage, as is common in SC.
As for templars psi-storming, I think that if SC had the WC3 type interface where you could tab to each templar and tell them where to psi-storm without unselecting the entire group, you would need to rebalance psi-storm. Most people would say this is a bad thing, I kind of disagree. When Sirlin rebalanced Feilong's flying kick by making it easier to do, he also made it worse with the sole exception being that the short version went through fireballs (okay they set up juggles now, too, but otherwise the flying kicks are strictly not as good as the ST versions). The flying kicks are still crazy good, and much easier to do. You can't get a death combo afterwards but they still put you in a good position and are very dangerous to play against. In much the same way if psi-storm is made easier, it is okay to nerf it a little bit as long as psi-storm remains dangerous and powerful. The goal is not that you'd nerf psi-storm so that it sucks, but that you'd balance it. Ideally you'd make the psi-storm still a very serious threat and able to do many of the things it previously could, but perhaps some of the more stupid, overpowered things that might arise from being able to do it more easily would be removed. This is of course theoretical but you get the idea, I hope.
Another thing that I really support is WC3's idle worker button. This does actually nothing to reduce the amount of APM you spend but rather gives you more informed decisions on how to spend it, which I think is fantastic.
There are other ways to reduce APM in general, for instance having units that deal large amounts of burst damage automatically change targets if the target they are firing at would be dramatically overkilled if they continued firing. You could also make units automatically focus fire and similar stuff like that. Some people might say this would reduce the strategy in the game but I would have to disagree. Even if the game tries to focus fire as intelligently as possible it won't do as good of a job as a human at making good strategic decisions in battle, unless the game is bad in the first place (and SC is most definitely not). While a low APM player would do more damage than he would otherwise, a high APM player would still get much more advantage out of his units if he was paying attention to the battle.
I actually understand the 'screen time tax' and I think that watching units build or mine or w/e is probably a bad way to artificially implement it, although Sirlin has his heart in the right place. I don't really have an answer to that, though. Other games dilute macro, which imo isn't a good thing. Maybe put more emphasis on expanding, so that you have to divert attention to building a second base?
Ahh Dawn of War saga is a whole lot better then Starcraft. You have about 10 playable races to Starcraft's 3. That many more units that much more strategy. Sadly as it is so obvious the new Starcraft still only has 3 races. Game is great I cant argue but it is honestly a little on the simple side. Even with the Brood War expansion there still isnt enough of upgradable units & units overall for my taste. Thanks but ill stick to Dawn of War.
Thank you Mike M for your completely subjective statement. Comparing numbers of races is completely flawed in your case never bring that up again.
Alan Feng's piano lesson was right before mine, way back in the day...
I hope you never stop writing, Sirlin.
I don't doubt that mechanics are "beloved" but I think it's very possible (likely?) that a new game with say, automining and MBS, will also be "beloved." Maybe not by you (though years from now, maybe yes by you actually).
The semi-finals of the Starcraft 2 GSL Code S tournament will be starting in about an hour, one of the people playing will be Jinro aka FrozenArbiter aka FA. Seems that prediction turned out pretty accurate.
Anyway, I think it could be interesting to revisit this argument now that SC2 has been out for a while: what do people think of the role and importance of APM in SC2? Does it still give people too much of an advantage? Should more things be automated?
(It's entirely possible this has already been brought up, and I just missed it, in which case links would be appreciated)
At first when I heard Berkley was putting on a class about a video game I was shocked. I don't really know anything about Starcraft or its gameplay but the concept of an entire class revolving around a game seemed silly; especially at a highly regarded school like U.C. Berkley. Although, after reading a few of these weekly review I can see that there is a level of depth to this game that cannot be appreciated from an outside perspective. But when I found out about the long mathematical formulas used to calculate game efficiency I realized that there was much more to learn about the game than meets the eye....YOSH ITS ON!!!!!
i honestly did not know there was this much depth to gaming, i have never played video games in my whole life and never would have imagined this would even how people viewed online video games. I personally like to be a little more active but i found it interesting.
@pkt-zer0:
SC2 is already stupidly hard, already APM is a big deal even though the game is drastically easier than SC1. Is it worth simplifying more? I'm not sure. I think some things could be simplified, but we're getting close to the point where clicking tons of stuff is mostly meaningful. There is still APM tax but it isn't universal between races, for instance T and P almost always want to be constantly making workers, where Z needs to make workers in batches whenever it has time. In general, Z is the race most difficult to automate; and perhaps correspondingly they are the weakest race.