Playing to Win Example: 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
A four person voting alliance was not something Rich stumbled
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| Richard Hatch, winner of the first Survivor. |
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?
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| Jenna's kids will be real 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 was an interesting player. He initially found Rich's alliance
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| You gotta love Rudy. |
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.
Another notable player was Colleen. She saw her own defeat
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| If only Colleen acted earlier. |
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 was another true scrub. He initially renounced alliances
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| Gervase thought alliances were cheap...at first. |
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.
But Kelly would have her final moment being the queen scrub.
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| Kelly, 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. If you're out there Rich, I'd be honored to introduce you to Starcraft. (heh.)
March 7th, 2006 at 4:39 pm
Simply amazing. Thank you.
March 11th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
There was a survivor going here in Sweden too (the first two seasons were good, then they removed much of the strategy by empathizing on competitions). In the second season there was a 4 person voting allience that owned everyone, they all made it to the final. Three of them were dynamic, strong willed and tought fighter types, but one, Jerker, was a tiny and peaceful fag (he really acted out on his sissyness). In the end everyone cast their vote on Jerker because they didn’t see him as a threat and in the final the jury voted on Jerker because he hadn’t been so aggressive and “mean” as his three allies.
Playing the harmless sissy had paid off, gg.
March 15th, 2006 at 2:42 am
Not 1 hour ago I was in a forum reading on the opinions of “spawn killing.” Since I am new to this game(Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter), I naturally took what you refer to as the “scrub attitude,” proclaiming it as cheap and uncalled for in a game that was just released a week ago. In that forum, a guy named ICK as well as a few others, had similar thoughts to you, while the majority were “scrub” opinions. I’ve found a new way to play the game, one that challenges not only yourself but the guys that you play with and against. I remeber back to another game that I played a few years ago, called MechAssault that was plagued by people whining of “spawn killing,” but on each map there was a way to prevent it even after it started and more importantly a team should never let that happen in the first place. Right on!
April 5th, 2006 at 6:54 am
This was an amazing article and oh so true. I can’t begin to tell how frustrating it is to play people in dead or alive or super smash brothers or pool or any game/sport and be discredited just because “I played cheaply.” How in the world can someone say that he’s better than someone who just wiped the floor with him?
This is a great site. You have everything right and have the gift to present it eloquently. I’m actually considering buying your book, heh. :D
April 6th, 2006 at 3:04 am
Survivor is and interesting example of this. If everyone but one person on the island is a scrub, then in the final vote, the remain scrub should win simply becuase the other players did not like such a ‘cheap’ player. Kelly would have won if everyone else had simply stayed a scrub.
April 10th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
It is for this reason that the Big Brother (UK anyway) rules forbid discussion of eviction nominations at all, with the penalty normally being removal of voting rights and automatic inclusion in the public phone/text vote (which the occupants of the house have no control over of course). Combined with secret voting this basically leaves the contestants trying to behave in a way the they think the public will like, in other words, a random chance.
May 22nd, 2006 at 4:23 am
“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.”
He was very lucky; they could have just as easily continued their “scrubbishness”. You offer a lot of “shoulds” in the paragraph containing that statement, but in a situation with 15 scrubs, there really aren’t any. It’s not like Starcraft, where if you have the better physical/mental agility and tactics, you’ll pulverize people who don’t. You have to play by their made-up rules, and manipulate them by them… or they just might decide that you deserve to lose.
The game was basically over for them at that point… they could’ve voted out of spite with no consequence at all.
I’d say one of the most difficult and game-breaking things to do in Survivor is figuring out who is and isn’t a scrub, and dealing with them accordingly. Should you manipulate them? Ally with them? Appeal to them? Get rid of them? If they hate you, you may be able to get rid of them, but their scrubby ways will dictate that they’ll vote against you during the final round.
June 19th, 2006 at 11:52 am
Excellent article, very insightful and well written.
By the way, isn’t it kind of funny how you wrote this article in 2000 but the first comments published for it happen six years later?
June 21st, 2006 at 9:22 am
The site didn’t used to have a comment system.
But now it does, and I suppose I should say that I’ve referenced this site more often than I can count. You have an eloquent writing style and are able to make good points clearly and coherently. Not only that, but you’re opinions are in line with my own, so I can quote someone in an argument without feeling guilty for having quoted myself. ;P
June 25th, 2006 at 8:43 am
I read the article and everything you said was true. It is truly remarkable just how pathetic the participants were. Rich was the only one that said, “I’m here to get 1 million dollars.” Some of them were for fun, one was for God, and another one didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.
The only true competitor was Richard because no one, except Richard, got serious until the final 5.
Rudy probably would have won if he had won the last immunity challenge, but it appeared as if his old age took a toll on his concentration as his grip lasped as he moved postitions.
August 9th, 2006 at 5:41 am
Perfect article.
September 19th, 2006 at 10:12 am
What’s truly fascinating is how scrubs will announce themselves as the better person because they were nice. The irony is that they had no chance to win, theresfore they were never faced with an ethical situation to begin with.
Wimpy scrubs will call themselves the nice person. Racists will act like their culture is somehow favored by God. The point of creating good games is so that theories can be put to the test. Winning and losing is one of the only things to get a person to change their mind.
September 26th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
This reminds me a lot of the World of Warcraft dueling game.
Dueling in WoW is where you take your MMORPG character and pit it in a prearranged battle with another from your own team in a 1 on 1 fight. When you reduce your opponent to 1 HP, the fight ends.
The problem is the vast quantity of things which are ‘cheap’ in these duels.
If you abuse a single powerful move - like the Hunter’s freeze shot, which holds the victim in place while he is shot at range, you are cheap.
If you use your character’s in-built ‘crowd control’ abilities - abilities which disable or immobilise your oppoent while you either damage them, or get into a position to do so, you are cheap (most character have CCs - some, like the rogue and warlock, rely upon them as the core of their design).
If you use any of a vast variety of things like ‘consumable’ potions and magic boosts, engineering devices and explosives, and even your racial abilities (for example, the Undead can break seduction and fear effects), you are cheap!
Most of this is just scrubdom at its best - the telling factor is the game is remarkably robust and balanced for its complexity if you just allow anything to go. There are very few ‘impossible’ matchups, and surprisingly few disadvantous ones. Even the quality of your character’s equipment, which most complain makes all the difference, is surprisingly ineffectual. The best 1v1 player I ever knew was a mage who never raided the big dungeons for super items, he just made do with what he could get made or find on his own. He utterly destroyed people in advanced raid sets that should have crushed him- partly because he outplayed them and partly because his gear, even though ‘weak’ in conventional damage attributes was tailored toward killing other player, emphasising little appreciated statistics.
But the question gets complicated when there ARE some cheap things…using the human ‘perception’ in a duel makes it pointless. It is an instant-win against a cloaked rogue, so the rogue is obliged to wait until it is used up before attacking. I have seen this go on for 20 minutes with nothing happening. Since perception is only useful if you know the opponent is there, this is not even a fair represenation of combat outside of duels. So I’d call that (the only ability in the game) cheap. Using healing potions - also sort of cheap, as it becomes a battle of who has the most in-game gold to blow on potions (and the people who have the most money and/or play the most are often the most inferior competitive players).
September 26th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
I have thought a lot about Survivor game theory, and I have concluded that the 4 person alliance is not ideal. Naturally when you form a 4 person alliance, the other half of the tribe will do the same, and you’re stuck like that with the winner being hard to decide. Also, assuming equal performance at challenges, that leaves you going into the merge with a 4 person alliance and one tribe outsider. Now, unless this person is the ultimate scrub and can actually be manipulated to go with you, they’ll just vote with the other tribe and make you lose 6-4. That is why I believe the 5 person alliance is truly a better number. In the tribal stage, you can easily just pick off whatever tribe outsiders you want, and you can approach the merge with confidance with a 5 man united tribe. If you don’t manage to carry that many people, you’re honestly probably going to lose anyway, but your best bet is to make your other tribesmen better targets so you’re the last person left on your tribe so you can play yourself as a swing vote as the enemy alliance starts to break down. If you carry more people to the merge, your best bet from there is to try to convince your extras that you are “on their side” so you can eliminate at least one member of the enemy tribe. From that point, it doesn’t matter what happens short of the odd man out winning the immunity in the final six, your alliance is the final five.
The other key thing is that within your alliance you have to be politically careful. Alliances tend to break down in a few ways, and you want to be on the right side of it, and you want it to not happen until everyone outside of the alliance is voted off(unless the politics shift against you despite your best efforts). It is common for two members of an alliance to form an extremely close bond and basically function vote wise as a unit. This is the ideal situation for you as an outsider as you simply convince your other allies that they are a threat but that if you all three work together you have numbers. That basically gets you a free pass to the final three at which point you just have to win one patience/endurance based immunity challenge to get to the jury, all without really offending anyone. Another possibility is that your alliance will develop an outsider(hopefully not you!). If this happens, you must work hard to try to keep that person in rank and file as if they start to dislike other members of your alliance they may do radical things, and their vote will be more or less a coin flip in the final five if they dont’ betray you sooner. It may be the case that they force you to get rid of them leaving you with Rich’s classic two pair alliance which gets really messy in the final four. Another case is the one leader problem in which one person stands out as a threat. This can work out if a hierarchy is established in the alliance, but you basically need a scrub who thinks you’re on his side for it to work(see Big Tom in Survivor All Stars). More often the whole alliance falls apart as everyone betrays the “leader”. The one thing to be careful of is to NOT make a group of three evidant as all too often will the two on the inferior side will look outside the alliance for votes, and if they do that, you’re in real trouble.
The whole goal in an alliance in which all people play competitively is NOT to win 1 million dollars. It is to be friendly with as many people as possible while making it as far in the voting as you can without risk. Being on the numerically superior side as often as possible is key; unlike in Survivor1, people actually count votes stacked against them so you have to have more votes than everyone else put together for your alliance to work. The irony is that everyone on there is still a scrub at heart, and they often make radical game descisions based on who “deserves to win”. All you can do as a competitive gamer is to try to be respected and productive and conveniently place yourself on the side with numbers. It’s like that sweet spot in Street Fighter you were talking about. People might get the idea they might want to hurt you, but whenever they try, you’re just barely out of range and prepared to punish them for it. The difference is that if you have numbers and maintain your brick walls, they just flat out lose on time over, and you win.
November 13th, 2006 at 10:38 am
this articles is only to true
i play a game called Gunz which can be a slow paced game or a fast paced take them down in two shots kinda game where you bust it out matrix style flying through the airs while the scrubs take to the floor complaining of unfairness.
well the game wasnt realy intended for people to fly through the air but somehow some people found a bug and have made known a whole set of glitches that allow you to simultanesly shoot dodge and slash at the same time giving you crazy speed compared to those others who simply roll, walk, or tumble along. the people who havent learned how to do it even though its quite easy to do with some practice complain about it to no end yeling stop cheating and stuff. but then there are some people who uses that style which is called k-style because the koreans was where the style of play came from. they complain about sprayers
sprayers are people who have a rifle and just holds down the shoot button continusly and hope that they make a hit
i dont think there should be any complaints as to how anyone should play the game at all.
because everyone has the same chances
November 27th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
There’s a HUGE difference between playing a video game and interacting with real people. I’d rather be loved and poor than rich and hated - it’s not a question of skill or mindset, its about sportsmanship. If you have to lie, cheat, and steal to beat others who abide by morals, then you just suck at the competition. Not to mention that if this is applied to politics, business, and other major fields, you leave most of the world miserable for your own sake.
‘Course I never actually watched Survivor, but I really don’t like that you’re trying to apply your ideals, though good in play, to things that actually make a difference.
November 28th, 2006 at 9:46 am
Yvl: Richard had two choices: Win by luck or win by trying to win. Based on those choices choosing to play to win does not make him a cheap bastard. It was either be a fool or enter the grey area between a strong person and a hated person.
Sirlin says every chance he gets that “life takes civic virtues, while playing competitive games takes military virtues.” So what exactly is it that you don’t like about how Silrin is using Survivor as a playing to win example?
Compare this to what I said (in post 12) about how the scrub will announce themselves the better person after they lose. Once again the irony is that you are not a good person if you didn’t even begin to try to win.
In a way you are right though. The reason why nobody learned their lesson after the first Survivor is because nobody was given a chance. There was nothing in Survivor’s design to help the scrubs to self better themselves and they will never be accepted into another Survivor game, which is why I don’t watch reality TV.
December 14th, 2006 at 12:54 am
In future seasons, the scrubs ruled the roost, so fake sincerity (see that dude from Boston), versus a pure game-theory analysis and manipulation became the norm. It’s been interesting to watch the game style change, and it shows that even with set rules, playing to emotions can be an effective strategy. I wonder if a woman weaing a very low cut top to a fighting game tournament would have no effect, even on someone “playing to win.”
December 14th, 2006 at 8:26 am
Playing to emotions probably works even at the higher levels of gameplay, but that kind of manipulation has to be as expert as the actual gameplay itself. At that point, the low cut shirt is just amateur. This low cut shirt wearer hasn’t been able to take Sirlin off his game.
Also, I’m with Daniel_BMS on wondering why everyone accuses Sirlin of wanting to apply his playing-to-win mentality to life in general. Lrn2read, ppl.
December 15th, 2006 at 5:39 am
Any game played free-for-all will have an alliance component, such that if people utilize it to their fullest, people not playing a colluding strategy can’t win. The reason it’s so prominent in specifically survivor is because there’s literally nothing else to the game. It’s the reason why most serious competitive players don’t play ffa games (the only exception that comes to mind is tournament poker; the only reason why it works there is because most hands should be folded, and because there is a heavily-enforced taboo against any kind of collusion, and even then there are some cooperative tournament strategies that appear in high-level play).
December 21st, 2006 at 3:42 am
This is fantastic article, and I’ve referred several people to it. I’ve never watched the show but really appreciate the analysis of it.
But here’s something interesting from an interview* with Mark Burnett (the creator and producer of Survivor):
“what makes the game work is the fact that the way to win is not by eliminating other people, but by convincing those people you eliminated to give you the money…The contestants are also learning something…which is that likeability is as important as capability in life.”
I’m trying to fit that into this discussion of competitive play. In the end, if *every* other player in a game is playing according to some unstated rules of conduct (i.e. everyone’s a scrub), then I think an unwillingness to adapt to those rules can itself be a form of scrub-iness…I just looked up Richard Hatch on Wiki and he seems to get eliminated early in his subsequent appearances on reality TV shows.
*The interview is at http://www.forbes.com/2006/12/10/games-mark-burnett-tech-cx_lr_games06_1212television.html
January 14th, 2007 at 4:53 am
For some reason i was re-reading this and while I agree with the article, but it brings up an interesting question…
How do you apply this reasoning to ties and/or cheating in game tournaments?
If Hatch was a tournament player, would we still praise him for forming alliances and influencing the result?
What if i’m about to play a tough opponent, and we just agree to split the combined prize money, and just allow one person to win so we’re both fresh for the next match? What if I agree to send the best player to the losers bracket, so I get 2 losses and he’s in a weaker bracket? According to survivor law, i would just be playing to maximize my winnings and those in my alliance, but it’s no doubt bad for the crowd and for future suppoer. What are your thoughts on this?
January 15th, 2007 at 4:39 am
FMJ, I have thought a lot about that for Evolution. In the end, I like the rules Magic: The Gathering tournaments use, not because they are ideal, but because they are the only practical rules I can even imagine. The rules are basically as follows:
1. It is legal to make deals with other players ahead of time about splitting prize money. These deals can take any form and do not need to be secret.
2. On the tournament floor, you may ask your opponent to draw/forfeit in order to split money with him. You can only ask him one time, and it must be in front of a judge.
3. The most important rule: you may never ever play a “fake” match. Doing so makes a mockery of the competition far more than simply forfeiting would. The above two rules ensure that you have no reason to ever play a fake match anyway, as there is no rule against forfeiting and splitting the money.
Again, these are not the ideal rules, but I think they are the least bad ones we can hope to realistically enforce. We will never know what kind of deals are going on, but we can at least stack everything to prevent fake matches. Sometimes fake matches are obvious shams (and that really hurts the viewership of the game, especially if it’s televised!). Sometimes fake matches are hard to spot, so the best we can do is give you no reason to play them.
Anyway, that’s my vote on how to handle things, and it has real-world basis in the form of the MTG floor rules.
–Sirlin
January 17th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Hah, this article was great. Every time I have ever played my friends in any video game, I am declared cheap. Whether it be exploiting the zone in madden and running the same 3 plays and audibles constantly or exploiting strategies in AoE or C&C, I have been called cheap. After beating everyone in Washers (the game kinda like bean bags where you have to throw a metal washer into a square bin or the PVC pipe in the middle of that bin), my friends specifically ruled against me being allowed to bounce my washer in front of the bin on purpose, a technique that I exploited to beat everyone at that game.
Anyways, I love playing games of any sort, and it’s hilarious to finally find someone who doesn’t just call my tactics cheap.
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:41 pm
I don’t exploit game weaknesses myself, I prefer to win by making my opponent lose mentally.
If I annoy him, taunt him, do whatever it takes to make him lose his ability to play effectively then thats fine by me.
I remember in a game called Raven Shield me and my friends would set up in a room and cover it, sneak out and make hit and runs, chuck tear gas. The amonut of cheapness whines was amazing, but it wasnt the “camping” that won it for us, it was their inability to overcome it.
Its not hard to flush out defenders if you just think about it.
January 27th, 2007 at 2:01 am
nice article. it changed my view a bit:
about a year ago me and two of my friends used to play wc3/tft 3v3 on battle.net on a daily basis. we haven’t been extraordinarily good players, but practice and knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses well got us at least a 2:1 statistic. in “normal” games, that consisted mostly of creeping, harrassing, expanding and one or two final battles, we were quite successful.
but about 1/4 of the matches were different. the opposing team exploited some “special strategy”, like just playing with a single hero, constantly harrassing and annoying us and teching us out, or getting mass summoned units, etc. (there are many “special strategies” in tft…) and we used to call that cheap and were extraordinarily proud when we managed to win against it by “normal” play.
but one day, annoyed by a number of “exploiters” that frequently owned us, we decided to try one of those dirty strategies we deemed “cheap”, and we realized two things: 1) many of those cheap strategies aren’t cheap at all, since most of them actually require far more skill, than they seem to from the perspective of the victim. 2) it is incredibly fulfilling to find a mechanism that works. development, finetuning and execution of “cheap strategies” is a very rewarding way to play the game.
but every time we used such a strategy and won with it a couple of times, we tended to feel guilty and soon stuck with “normal play” again. this artice changes my mind about that: in fact the rules of the game are meant to be exploited in order to win, it is kind of the essence of the game.
but i think there is a limit: as soon as a strategy cannot be countered by any means, it is beyond game balance and should therefore be avoided. this is not the case for any of the “cheap” strategies i know of in wc3/tft, but in the early days of dawn of war, there were a couple of overpowered exploits.
this game had serious balancing issues (and keeps suffering from that until today) and some strategies and units were so imba, that they couldn’t be countered effectively. since relic wasn’t too fast fixing balancing issues and tended to cure one desease with another (one unit was too weak and wasn’t played at all? be sure it was overpowered after the patch. another unit was imba? the next fix would render it useless..), this was about to destroy the small dow community. but soon a remarkable thing happened: these exploits were avoided more and more frequently and it became good conduct to do so. today it is common sense in the community, that exploiting the (still existing) balancing issues would have a desastrous effect; it has become the domain of fools and newbies, but not of the serious players.
January 14th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
DOOM
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:17 pm
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