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)
Regarding APM and having arbitrary challenge in an interface:
Sirlin, of course, has it right, although I'm sympathetic to the old school players. Often, a player will put a large of effort in crossing some barrier necessary to be competitive, even if that barrier isn't fun or in the spirit of the genre. To remove the barrier trivializes their past effort, though it is probably better design and good for the game. It's almost like an exclusive country club that suddenly removes their $1M lifetime membership fee. Everyone who has already paid is now pissed even though the core of the game hasn't really changed. "Yes, there are now vastly more players who present a fun challenge, but can I have my entry fee back, please?"
This has probably been discussed elsewhere, but old school players also perceive an advantage to having such a tax built into a game--they can more quickly dispense with the uninitiated. This argument is more relevant to RTS, where a game can take a good while to conclude. It's fun (for the very few) to destroy most opponents relatively quickly and only "worthy competitors" are allowed to consume a 20-40 minute chunk of the elite player's time. Whether or not that's a good property for a game to have, and to what degree, is another debate. Should this property be achieved by intentionally creating a challenging interface? Clearly, no.
I feel threatened because if a game came out that was all strategy... Where would be the competitiveness?
Re: Sirlin
I completely agree, but you are still missing two points.
In Starcraft, the APM barrier actually factors into the balance of the game. Some tactics present in the game would become unbalanced if they were easier to execute. For example, if you could instantly order 4 full groups of Zerglings (48 lings) to attack, surrounding would be much easier and the entire Zerg early game would change. If you could magically cast 4 simultaneous Psi Storms (technically you can, but you have to go to extra work setting up the positioning of your Templars, so it's not really worth it), you could basically nullify Zerglings and Hydras. Some things are only balanced because they cannot be done fast enough to be unbalanced.
The second point is that the high APM requirement forces players to spend a certain amount of time at their base, which makes their army vulnerable if it's out in the middle of the map. Because you can't move the camera into the stratosphere like in Supreme Commander, the high APM requirements actually strengthen the attention-management aspects of the game. While you're paying attention to your army, your base is vulnerable, and while you're paying attention to your base, your army is vulnerable. Since Starcraft demands a larger amount of attention than most other RTS games, diversions and simultaneous attacks can be very effective.
Unlike HD Remix, you couldn't just remove the high APM requirements without hurting the rest of the game. You would have to completely rebalance certain things and find another way to make attention management a difficult, but important part of the game. I'm cautiously optimistic about SC2 since this seems to be the route Blizzard is taking, but the downside is that I have to listen to the continual cries of those with a fetish for the sound of a keyboard.
SCC: Why would we have sympathy for that flawed world-view? It's wrongheaded to say that because you had to suffer, other people must suffer also. The correct response would be to remove the suffering. Only a very twisted person would hang their argument on something like making everyone suffer just because they did. Yet sadly, I see this argument all the time from StarCraft (and Street Fighter) players.
Next, if you are playing against bad players in a game where there is no APM tax and you can't beat them quickly, then what that means is that you don't deserve to beat them quickly. Apparently they aren't so bad. The world is worse off if you require the bad players to practice non-interactive, 1p skills first. If the game lasts too long (and I think it kind of does), then that's a separate issue.
Roie: Joke comment or real?
Phantom: you say the situation is unlike Street Fighter but it is actually exactly like Street Fighter. Most moves, the experts can do them all the time anyway but some are hard even for experts and are balanced around that hardness. So I had to change those. They include Dhalsim's teleport and Fei Long's flying kicks, to name a couple. So yes, the game might have to be rebalanced when APM tax is removed. Solution? Rebalance the game.
Your other point about making people split attention by requiring high APM is a better one. For me, I outright reject the notion that APM is worthwhile to test for its own sake. And I even question whether attention splitting is worthwhile to test. On that point though, I'm willing to conclude that it's reasonable to say yes, even if I don't personally say yes. So we'll assume that we do want to split attention. Is APM one way? Yes. Are there other ways that don't require high APM? I bet there are. I still say the game would be much more inclusive and no less strategic if there were a maximum-useful-APM that was set much lower than it is now. If only someone imagines hard enough to figure out how to implement such a system.
I don't really disagree with you Sirlin, but I do think it's somewhat of a tangent to what Azn said. Azn implied that Starcraft was simple and arcade like and gave the APM requirements as a reason why. That's simply not the case though, there's clearly a significant degree of depth to Starcraft. I really was trying to argue the same attention-splitting point that Phantom explained, and he clearly worded it much better than I did.
I don't enjoy APM for the sake of APM either, many advances in the RTS genre that reduce mindless APM are great in my opinion. Recently in fact I've been enjoying DoW2 which removes a lot of the APM requirements by removing all base building and worker units. The game as a whole might lack strategic depth from my initial impressions but that has less to do with the removal of base building and more to do with other factors.
Now I think there are better ways to divide attention (with things that require decision making and not mindless tasks) but to be honest it's one of the things I enjoy most about the RTS genre. I really like that I can't just sit and focus on this one aspect of the game to win and instead I have to juggle and multitask several different tasks at once.
I havent read through all of the comments here in their entirety, but I'd like to adress the point about APM adding to a game. It doesnt. The proof lies in turn based games; take Chess for example. No APM at all, no physical ability required at all, yet a game that had an incredible amount of depth. So StarCraft, or other RTSs really dont need APM to be good if they were designed properly. The only decisions avalible to the player should be real decisions; no "taxes" please. Micro is a flaw in my opinion.
And really, chess in hardly unique in that aspect. Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, Poker, and tons of other games require no physical skill in order to be fun and competitive.
"I havent read through all of the comments here in their entirety, but I'd like to adress the point about APM adding to a game. It doesnt. The proof lies in turn based games; take Chess for example. No APM at all, no physical ability required at all, yet a game that had an incredible amount of depth. "
-wow so you're saying apm shouldn't matter in starcraft because it doesn't in chess? ...
"So StarCraft, or other RTSs really dont need APM to be good if they were designed properly."
-If the game was designed properly? Properly according to who? And maybe some games don't need apm to be good, but that doesn't mean apm can't make a game better.
"The only decisions avalible to the player should be real decisions; no "taxes" please."
-Real decisions? As opposed to fake ones? If you don't want any physical skill involved, go play chess but please don't criticize starcraft for not being a turn based game.
"Micro is a flaw in my opinion."
-I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that you've never played starcraft at any type of competitive level.
the "absolute maximum" apm for starcraft seems to be around 250. this is around where the low APM pro players (stork and savior, for example) play at, and it seems to work fairly well for them.
to me, APM is more of a sign of experience than any real measure of skill. the more you play, the faster you'll execute. just for shits and giggles, i fired up a starcraft APM counter and played my favourite game, guildwars, for a full alliance battle. the counter read around 310 by the end of it.
does guildwars REALLY require 310 apm? hell no. you only need to be as fast as the game engine will allow for the activation of skills/movement/targeting, which generally is around 100 apm to execute some of the more advanced tricks (most have something to do with positioning and movement). at the end of the day, my 300 apm in guildwars doesn't even mean i'm all that great at the game. all it tells me is that i play it too much.
i believe, after a certain point, the same can be said for starcraft, as well as any other game out there.
Re: TopWolf
Your post exhibits a very common misconception about fast-paced, real-time games, as well as an apparent lack of understanding of what the term "micro" means.
The first obvious flaw in your argument is that, when you take away the time element from a real-time game, you do not get a turn-based game. You get a screenshot. Turn-based games are designed around fundamentally different assumptions than real-time games, and almost all commonly used analogies between the two are flawed. Because the fundamental mechanics are different, strategy emerges in different ways in both types of games. Chess (unless you're playing speed chess with a low time limit) is about careful deliberation and exploring all your options before making a decision. Real-time games with significant elements of strategy (RTSs, fighting games, and certain puzzle games) are about developing efficient heuristic methods for selecting the best option when the set of all options cannot be explored due to strict time constraints. There is a fundamentally different focus between the two types of games.
The main misconception in your comment is that all APM is mindless APM. The problem with Starcraft is not that all its APM is mindless APM, but that too much of it is. If you knew anything about Starcraft as a competitive sport, you would know that many "real decisions" take place quite rapidly at competitive levels. Visit http://www.gomtv.net/classics2/vod/ and listen to some English commentary VODs if you don't believe me.
Some actions are mindless, and some require a great amount of thought. Actions are the manifestations of a player's decisions in the same way that the movement of Roger Federer's arm is the manifestation of his decision to send the ball to a specific spot on the other side of the net. It is not about the action itself, but the decisions that cause it. I'm sure Federer doesn't think about the movement of his arm, but he does think about what he plans to accomplish by moving it. A game that "doesn't need APM" doesn't need decisions, and, consequently, is mindless. It's the exact opposite of what you said.
Likewise, the term "micro" refers to controlling a group (usually a small group) of units very precisely to achieve a specific purpose that could not otherwise be accomplished by controlling them imprecisely. Micro is not the series of clicks and button presses that must necessarily accompany this, it is the whole process of deciding on a logical tactic and executing it precisely. To say that a player has "good micro" does not mean that he can press a bunch of buttons quickly. That might make him a good typist, but certainly not a good RTS player. A player with good micro is a player who has a certain way of thinking that allows him to use a small group of units to achieve results that normally require a large group of units.
Real-time games, unlike turn-based games, are not simply about strategy. They are also about how you execute that strategy. In well-designed real-time games, a great amount of mental skill (including yomi, pattern recognition, the ability to visualize multiple events happening at the same time, etc) is required to execute a complex strategy, regardless of how much physical skill the game requires.
To me, the point of a game being real-time isn't necessarily to add an execution tax to important actions. It's to create an environment of decisions that must be made with varying time limits. The depth of such a game is pretty much determined by the interaction of each player's decisions - player A does something that forces player B to quickly do the right thing, etc. Those interactions are so fun that I think turn-based games are kind of boring in comparison (just an opinion, not a value judgment). This is why I've always liked combat micro, but absolutely despised base management.
Sirlin: we're probably in the same boat about the attention splitting thing. I tried a bit of DoW2, and I felt out of my element focusing on multiple things... even though the game is almost all combat/area control and not really any base building (so I had fun even though I sucked :) ). In a game where you command many little units at once instead of directly controlling a single character, I think attention-splitting is pretty much a given. When it comes to playing seriously, I'll just stick to my simple "directly control a single guy" games.
BTW, the game doesn't use arbitrary APM requirements as a way to control attention splitting. It uses the simple concept of "players will not hit some upper limit on things that can be done at once, so help them do more instead of less". The maps I played were small (a good thing), but big enough with enough resource/control points to allow players to do several meaningful things at once.
Clicking on a resource 400 times a minute is hardly a useful action. But that'll get your APM up. There's a concept of u-APM that's useful actions per minute, but notably that's harder to measure hence no one talks about it. The old Starcraft interface was crappier than what Warcraft 3 has for example BUT that doesn't mean that because Warcraft 3 has lesser clicks needed that it's any less of a strategical/micro oriented game.
Dumb argument to call it "lesser skill therefore more strategy". Wait for Starcraft 2, I am sure most of the oldies in SC1 would definitely need a "lesser" APM in doing the base management stuff that they so spam with now.
Sirlin:
We are in agreement that the noted arguments for retaining an arbitrary APM tax are weak. So, why be sympathetic to them? Because not factoring player desires or expectations into an improved design can make it less likely that an improved design will be adopted. I imagine it wasn't just personal preference that you retained dexterity moves in SFHD, but also the weight of fan expectation, even if you wouldn't label it "sympathy".
Regarding your system to lower maximum possible useful APM: I'm not sure if that was sarcasm, but lots of server-based games do this in a variety of ways, more for server performance than the design reasons we're discussing.
Every time people talk about mechanics it always seems to me to be just a cry of "MECHANICS ARE CHEAP". If Starcraft was just about strategy... it would be boring. Chess is boring.
Strategy is boring because you can copy it easily. 99% of the people that play any RTS or fighting game do not come up with the strategy they are using. They copy it from better players and they then try to execute it.
You talk of mindless clicks, but that really shows you have never played Starcraft on a competitive level. There are no clicks in Starcraft that do not require a decision. EVERY click is a decision not to click somewhere else. Part of the strategy of Starcraft and part of why it is so deep is because there are Strategies that revolve around requiring less attention to create than the attention it requires for your opponent to deal with the problem.
The other thing is: If starcraft was easy mechanically, it wouldn't be a spectator sport. Korean fangirls scream because of players' macro and micro, not because of their strategies that they probably just copied from some other player anyway. Street Fighter is an amazing game because of the focus on mechanics, yomi, and strategy. Starcraft is an amazing game because of the focus on mechanics, timing (the invisible player), strategy. I'm a mechanically terrible player in every game I play. I win with my tricky strategies in starcraft. But at the same time I wouldn't feel the same joy I feel if it required less mechanics. It'd be an empty victory. I like the fact that the game makes me always feel overwhelmed with my meager 100apm. Yet, I've beaten players with 300apm. Some people really love to be mechanically sound players and not tricky players, and their playstyle should not be hated. It's not cheap to be a mechanically sound player. It's a beautiful strategy and should be the way to go. Because the top players in Starcraft are always those that are not only mechanically perfect but strategically genius. The first player to reach 400apm in starcraft was known as the "Genius Terran" not as the "400apm Mechanical Terran". Players who dominate and destroy like Flash or Bisu or Jaedong today are always mechanically incredible players who also have strategic expertise unlike anyone else. Really though it boils down to this, I'll quote a post by another person on a Starcraft forum:
"people are resistant to this idea because people hate it when they are just excluded from being good. apm and mechanics can be practiced but the perception is that for raw speed and multitask, there are physical limits, kind of like height and coordination in basketball. some people have it, some people don't. the truth is right there in front of you when your opponent is faster and better. whereas strategy seems to be this abstract concept that the everyman thinks he can learn and beat people with. there's something more egalitarian and attractive about strategy trumping speed (ie out-thinking an opponent who has better mechanics).
think of it like a real sport, there are a few exceptions but in basketball in general you need to jump high, be tall, and be coordinated/athletic, and then you can learn about footwork, jump shots, and where to move on defense. sure you can play basketball without the height/speed/jumping ability and even play it very well, but you won't be the best in the world. the same is for SC--you need a base level of handspeed and multitask that to an extent can be practiced (like speed and jump can be trained in basketball) but innately there are different ceilings and limits for everyone. You need these aspects to be elite before even thinking about strategy.
unfortunately this isn't reality. its NOT good when strategy is the biggest part of the game because for computer games, there are easily reachable limits to strategy. yes SC is still evolving but its mainly adjusting to maps and metagame, not the basics. there are few new revolutionary strategies on a basic level--nothing is going to change the "base" tactics of vultures and tanks vs protoss and mm vs zerg.
where players can differentiate themselves is mechanics, speed, etc. that's what makes a sport a sport and a game a game, when certain players are better and no matter what most of the people do, they won't get as good as the best. that's where high skill differentiation comes in. and its good for SC, not bad.
but to sum up, a lot of people hate it that mechanics > strategy because it basically kills any chance of being very good for a large portion of the community. there is always a general sentiment that whats inside (smarts, personality, etc) [i]should[/i] matter more than innate outer qualities (physical ability, looks), because you can control one much more than the other. for many players and fans, they see the mechanics as physical, less controllable quality and strategy as "whats on the inside" so they feel its more genuine or fair to win by strategy than pure mechanics, because it means that anyone, even those that aren't fast like themselves, can be great. that's why people love the short players in the NBA, because its hope that anyone can be great at basketball regardless of height. this obviously just isn't true and the few short players are truly rare exceptions to a rule. its a hard reality to face for a lot of people, that they just can't be great."
ironically though the basics of mm vs. zerg HAS CHANGED to tanks vs. zerg since the time that post was made. but it doesn't make his point any less valid.
I would also like to point out that this isn't any kind of selfishness on the part of the Starcraft community.
We don't want the games to be like this because it favors us... 99.9% of the starcraft community has ass-terrible mechanics. I have a mere 100apm, I can't keep up macro-wise with people faster than me at all. UI "improvements" would benefit me greatly, I would no longer be stuck at a mere D rank on a ladder. But I SHOULD be stuck on a D rank on a ladder. I did not practice as much as other players. Why is it that in our culture we must reward some kind of abstract idea of "strategy" rather than HONEST HARD WORK? What is wrong with hard work? Why is a game where you don't have to practice somehow regarded as more pure?
In street fighter, mechanics is generally a yes or no statement. Can you shoryu? Can you reversal shoryu? Can you do a 720 motion? etc. Starcraft it's not a yes or no question, it can't be shown like that. Can you macro? The answer for everyone is a yes but a yes to a certain degree. There is no black and white and nobody is excluded from being competitive. If you really wanted Street Fighter to be easier then you'd just add a built in macro feature that lets you do combos or 720s on demand. The game would be in slow motion because the best strategy would win. Because in Street Fighter there's a bar to being competitive, you can't play against a zangief without being able to reversal, for example. In Starcraft, nothing like this exists.
A relevant quote off of teamliquid.net:
"At my absolute peak in terms of mass gaming, when I was A+ on PGTour or when I played 30 games a day for almost a week vs testie before WCG 2006.. I was never able to rise significantly above 250 apm in long games. I don't have great execution (but it's decent), I don't have great speed (but it's decent) - the changes would favour me. And I still argued against most of them for a long time.
So I take issue with people saying we only protest out of selfish reasons, because it's totally untrue - the changes would benefit every single player on this site when playing against a professional gamer.
There's a good chance the game will be fine with these UI additions tho, and I'm gonna wait and see if that's the case before I decide if they are for good or for bad."
other quotes:
"Giving people more time doesn't somehow magically inject more strategy.
If instead of having say a minute to make a move in chess, you gave people 2 minutes, does that mean you would see more strategy in chess? No, of course not - the strategy potential in the game is inherent."
"Another unintended consequence is that harassment becomes more difficult to pull off. The success of harassment is two fold. It draws the enemies attention and it can go unnoticed. Either they opponent has to see it and take care of it, or it destroys them. This is good and exciting. Without macro to occupy a players attention however, they can afford to be constantly vigilant for that red blip on their minimap. Where a player now has more time to harass their enemy, their enemy has more time to defend, leading to yet another freezing of what was a dynamic part of the original."
I think this whole "tax" notion has gone a bit too far. Just because many people aren't skilled enough to play at a high level, doesn't mean there's a fault in the game.
Again, there's no right or wrong way here to design the game. Clearly Blizzard stumbled upon a successful model. The korean pro-scene, still growing after this game has been around for 11 years, is a testament to the quality of starcraft.
People who aren't fast enough to play sc well need to stop bitching and start practicing.
after a certain point apm ceases to be able physical speed and becomes more of a mental block.
A very interesting topic, these various tiers of gameplay.
As for which is better, apm or strategy, it all comes down to a matter of taste. Sirlin and others seem to prefer strategy (as do I), while others prefer more of a physical challenge. Nobody can be correct or incorrect about this, these are simply opinions on what makes a particular game fun, which are of course going to vary from person to person and game to game.
If you think [random game] is gay because it requires too much [game mechanic] and not enough of [other game mechanic], then you should probably spend more time playing [games not like random game], leaving those that enjoy [random game] to their fate.
In summary, fun is subjective, don't beat people into the ground over their opinions.
asdf: In Street Fighter, mechanics are a yes or no? Um, completely wrong. I don't know how anyone could possibly claim that. There is range of difficulty ranging from very easy (can you shoryuken) to very hard (can you do a combo in a match that would usually only be possible under the controlled conditions of a combo video?). Also, there's varying success rates for different people all along that spectrum. As I've said before, SF HD Remix is much better off with the knob turned toward easier execution and it would have been an ever better game yet if I turned the knob more.
Seeing comments about how a sport needs difficult execution is really disappointing. First of all, I'd hope our games were not so lowly as to be merely sports. In a sport, weighing a lot can be a big advantage. Being tall can be a big advantage. Those are really boring advantages. I'm not interested in skill testing who is heaviest, who is tallest, or who can click fastest (are you??). Our games can be so much better than sports by removing that and being about strategy instead.
Next point, when you remove a lot execution in Street Fighter, the remaining game is VERY DAMN GOOD. The remaining game is not worse or bad. The same would be true in the RTS genre. The game you'd have with less APM emphasis would be very good, not worse. If you are interested in seeing great APM, I have to ask why. I mean, what a boring skill, who cares? Why are you interested in 1p stuff in a 2p game? Would chess be more interesting if you had to bake a cake in the middle of the game? Baking a cake takes a lot of skill and it has nothing to do with the strategy of chess. (Complainers should stop complaining and learn to bake some cakes, by the way.)
I'm not talking about completely removing execution in StarCraft or Street Fighter, remember, but only removing the pointless stuff that can be eliminated. That stuff is not unlike baking a cake: it has nothing to do with strategy. Why do all these clicks interest you? They sure don't interest me. I'd like to see a series of good decisions. We could get even more players playing on that level by reducing the APM tax so that more people can play the "real game" that happens after the tax.
If only I could give you a Starcraft HD Remix, but I can't because it's cost-prohibitive. Unfortunately, it will remain only an academic topic, because I've heard StarCraft 2 will continue the tradition of requiring high APM to compete. That actually sounds pretty boring to me and very disappointing because I bet the game will be A+ in every other area. I'd rather see a game more focused on the interaction between players, rather than a game of interaction between only very, very fast-clicking players, where the rest are pretty severely disadvantaged. Why would you reward being tall in "real-time strategy" game, or being able to bake cakes well, or being able to operate at 300 or 400 APM? I guess if we're aiming really low, like only to the level of a physical sport, then sure. But we have the chance in computer games to remove the skill tests that have no place, and create even more interesting games that test only the interesting skills.
I really wish people would stop comparing Starcraft to Chess with the intent of showing how Chess is boring. If one thinks Chess is boring, that's fine. I feel the same way too. But it is a game that is thousands of years old.
There are literally thousands of board games that have come out in the last five years, and literally hundreds of strategy games that are excellent with little (or no) luck element and are (in my opinion anyway) extremely fun.
It kind of reminds me of when people reference the WWF for something even though they've been the WWE for several years now.
I realize that Chess is often brought up because it is a reference that nearly everyone will get, as opposed to all the board games that have come out over the last 10 years. However, I don't think it's fair to think of it as the game that something will turn into if a game is purely strategy.
In fact, part of the reason (I think, anyway) that so many excellent little-to-no luck games have come out recently is that they feature mechanics that would be an improvement to Chess but they cannot be applied to Chess because the community would reject it as anything to be taken seriously. So they have to apply the mechanics to their own game.
"Seeing comments about how a sport needs difficult execution is really disappointing. First of all, I'd hope our games were not so lowly as to be merely sports. In a sport, weighing a lot can be a big advantage. Being tall can be a big advantage. Those are really boring advantages. I'm not interested in skill testing who is heaviest, who is tallest, or who can click fastest (are you??). Our games can be so much better than sports by removing that and being about strategy instead."
I suppose you should re-word your last sentence to read, "...by removing that and being only about strategy." And I while I respect that opinion, I strongly disagree. I don't necessarily see a barrier to succeed as a barrier to entry. You name any sort of popular contest that awards players with said "boring" advantages, and I'll quickly point out that the contest was designed well enough that the have nots will still flock to compete anyway.
I will concede that there's a benefit in creating a game that doesn't have such an obvious ceiling on players based on whatever physical attribute, but I don't see that necessarily as a negative feature. It's just another variable thrown into the equation, and all variables have pluses and minuses.