Playing to Win, Part 1
[Edit: I wrote this article over 6 years ago. It was so widely quoted and valuable to so many that I spent two years writing the book Playing to Win. The book is far more polished than these articles, better organized, and covers many, many additional topics not found on my site. If you have any interest in the process of self-improvement through competitive games, the book will serve you better than the articles. --Sirlin]
Playing to win is the most important and most widely misunderstood concept in all of competitive games. The sad irony is that those who do not already understand the implications I'm about to spell out will probably not believe them to be true at all. In fact, if I were to send this article back in time to my earlier self, even I would not believe it. Apparently, these concepts are something one must come to learn through experience, though I hope at least some of you will take my word for it.
Introducing...the Scrub
In the world of Street Fighter competition, we have a word for players who aren't good: "scrub." Now, everyone begins as a scrub---it takes time to learn the game to get to a point where you know what you're doing. There is the mistaken notion, though, that by merely continuing to play or "learn" the game, that one can become a top player. In reality, the "scrub" has many more mental obstacles to overcome than anything actually going on during the game. The scrub has lost the game even before it starts. He's lost the game before he's chosen his character. He's lost the game even before the decision of which game is to be played has been made. His problem? He does not play to win.
The scrub would take great issue with this statement for he usually believes that he is playing to win, but he is bound up by an intricate construct of fictitious rules that prevent him from ever
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| Historical Scrub: Neville Chamberlain. He didn't even try to win, instead offering "appeasement" to Hitler. |
truly competing. These made up rules vary from game to game, of course, but their character remains constant. In Street Fighter, for example, the scrub labels a wide variety of tactics and situations "cheap." So-called "cheapness" is truly the mantra of the scrub. Performing a throw on someone often called cheap. A throw is a special kind of move that grabs an opponent and damages him, even when the opponent is defending against all other kinds of attacks. The entire purpose of the throw is to be able to damage an opponent who sits and blocks and doesn't attack. As far as the game is concerned, throwing is an integral part of the design---it's meant to be there---yet the scrub has constructed his own set of principles in his mind that state he should be totally impervious to all attacks while blocking. The scrub thinks of blocking as a kind of magic shield which will protect him indefinitely. Why? Exploring the reasoning is futile since the notion is ridiculous from the start.
You're not going to see a classic scrub throw his opponent 5 times in a row. But why not? What if doing so is strategically the sequence of moves that optimize his chances of winning? Here we've encountered our first clash: the scrub is only willing to play to win within his own made-up mental set of rules. These rules can be staggeringly arbitrary. If you beat a scrub by throwing projectile attacks at him, keeping your distance and preventing him from getting near you...that's cheap. If you throw him repeatedly, that's cheap, too. We've covered that one. If you sit in block for 50 seconds doing no moves, that's cheap. Nearly anything you do that ends up making you win is a prime candidate for being called cheap.
Doing one move or sequence over and over and over is another great way to get called cheap. This goes right to the heart of the matter: why can the scrub not defeat something so obvious and telegraphed as a single move done over and over? Is he such a poor player that he can't counter that move? And if the move is, for whatever reason, extremely difficult to counter, then wouldn't I be a fool for not using that move? The first step in becoming a top player is the realization that playing to win means doing whatever most increases your chances of winning. The game knows no rules of "honor" or of "cheapness." The game only knows winning and losing.
A common call of the scrub is to cry that the kind of play in which ones tries to win at all costs is "boring" or "not fun." Let's consider two groups of players: a group of good players and a group of scrubs. The scrubs will play "for fun" and not explore the extremities of the game. They won't find the most effective tactics and abuse them mercilessly. The good players will. The good players will find incredibly overpowering tactics and patterns. As they play the game more, they'll be forced to find counters to those tactics. The vast majority of tactics that at first appear unbeatable end up having counters, though they are often quite esoteric and difficult to discover. The counter tactic prevents the first player from doing the tactic, but the first player can then use a counter to the counter. The second player is now afraid to use his counter and he's again vulnerable to the original overpowering tactic. (See my article on Yomi layer 3 for much more on that.)
Notice that the good players are reaching higher and higher levels of play. They found the "cheap stuff" and abused it. They know how to stop the cheap stuff. They know how to stop the other guy from stopping it so they can keep doing it. And as is quite common in competitive games, many new tactics will later be discovered that make the original cheap tactic look wholesome and fair. Often in fighting games, one character will have something so good it's unfair. Fine, let him have that. As time goes on, it will be discovered that other characters have even more powerful and unfair tactics. Each player will attempt to steer the game in the direction of his own advantages, much how grandmaster chess players attempt to steer opponents into situations in which their opponents are weak.
Let's return to the group of scrubs. They don't know the first
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| Historical Scrubs: The British Redcoats. The ultimate example of being too bound up by rules to actually fight. They fought "honorably" by marching into gunfire. |
thing about all the depth I've been talking about. Their argument is basically that ignorantly mashing buttons with little regard to actual strategy is more "fun." Superficially, their argument does at least look true, since often their games will be more "wet and wild" than games between the experts, which are usually more controlled and refined. But any close examination will reveal that the experts are having a great deal of fun on a higher level than the scrub can even imagine. Throwing together some circus act of a win isn't nearly as satisfying as reading your opponent's mind to such a degree that you can counter his ever move, even his every counter.
Can you imagine what will happen when the two groups of players meet? The experts will absolutely destroy the scrubs with any number of tactics they've either never seen, or never been truly forced to counter. This is because the scrubs have not been playing the same game. The experts were playing the actual game while the scrubs were playing their own homemade variant with restricting, unwritten rules.
The scrub has still more crutches. He talks a great deal about "skill" and how he has skill whereas other players---very much including the ones who beat him flat out---do not have skill. The confusion here is what "skill" actually is. In Street Fighter, scrubs often cling to combos as a measure of skill. A combo is sequence of moves that are unblockable if the first move hits. Combos can be very elaborate and very difficult to pull off. But single moves can also take "skill," according to the scrub. The "dragon punch" or "uppercut" in Street Fighter is performed by holding the joystick toward the opponent, then down, then diagonally down and toward as the player presses a punch button. This movement must be completed within a fraction of a second, and though there is leeway, it must be executed fairly accurately. Ask any scrub and they will tell you that a dragon punch is a "skill move." Just last week I played a scrub who was actually quite good. That is, he knew the rules of the game well, he knew the character matchups well, and he knew what to do in most situations. But his web of mental rules kept him from truly playing to win. He cried cheap as I beat him with "no skill moves" while he performed many difficult dragon punches. He cried cheap when I threw him 5 times in a row asking, "is that all you know how to do? throw?" I gave him the best advice he could ever hear. I told him, "Play to win, not to do ‘difficult moves.'" This was a big moment in that scrub's life. He could either write his losses off and continue living in his mental prison, or analyze why he lost, shed his rules, and reach the next level of play.
I've never been to a tournament where there was a prize for the winner and another prize for the player who did many difficult moves. I've also never seen a prize for a player who played "in an innovative way." Many scrubs have strong ties to "innovation." They say "that guy didn't do anything new, so he is no good." Or "person x invented that technique and person y just stole it." Well, person y might be 100 times better than person x, but that doesn't seem to matter. When person y wins the tournament and person x is a forgotten footnote, what will the scrub say? That person y has "no skill" of course.
Depth in Games
I've talked about how the expert player is not bound by rules of
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| Scrub of the Future: Captain Kathryn Janeway. Voyager would have been home ages ago if it weren't for her silly rules. (Don't watch Voyager.): |
"honor" or "cheapness" and simply plays to maximize his chances of winning. When he plays against other such players, "game theory" emerges. If the game is a good one, it will become deeper and deeper and more strategic. Poorly designed games will become shallower and shallower. This is the difference between an arcade game that lasts years in an arcade versus one that lasts 4 months. This is the difference between a PC game that lasts years on the shelves (Starcraft) versus one that quickly becomes boring (I won't name any names). The point is that if a game becomes "no fun" at high levels of play, then it's the game's fault, not the player's. Unfortunately, a game becoming less fun because it's poorly designed and you just losing because you're a scrub kind of look alike. You'll have to play some top players and do some soul searching to decide which is which. But if it really is the game's fault, there are plenty of other games that are excellent at a high level of play. For games that truly aren't good at a high level, the only winning move is not to play.
Boundaries of Playing to Win
There is a gray area here I feel I should point out. If an expert does anything he can to win, then does he exploit bugs in the game? The answer is a resounding yes...but not all bugs. There is a large class of bugs in video games that players don't even view as bugs. In Marvel vs. Capcom 2, for example, Iceman can launch his opponent into the air, follow him, do a few hits, then combo into his super move. During the super move he falls down below his opponent, so only about half of his super will connect. The Iceman player can use a trick, though. Just before doing the super, he can do another move, an icebeam, and cancel that move into the super. There's a bug here which causes iceman to fall, during his super, at the much slower rate of his icebeam. The player actually cancels the icebeam as soon as possible---optimally as soon as 1/60th of a second after it begins. The whole point is to make iceman fall slower during his super so he gets more hits. Is it a bug? I'm sure it is. It looks like a programming oversight to me. Would an expert player use this? Of course.
The iceman example is relatively tame. In Street Fighter Alpha2, there's a bug in which you can land the most powerful move in the game (a Custom Combo or "CC") on the opponent, even when he should be able to block it. A bug? Yes. Does it help you win? Yes. This technique became the dominant tactic of the game. The gameplay evolved around this, play went on, new strategies were developed. Those who cried cheap were simply left behind to play their own homemade version of the game with made-up rules. The one we all played had unblockable CCs, and it went on to be a great game.
But there is a limit. There is a point when the bug becomes too much. In tournaments, bugs that turn the game off, or freeze it indefinitely, or remove one of the characters from the playfield permanently are banned. Bugs so extreme that they stop gameplay are considered unfair even by non-scrubs. As are techniques that can only be performed on, say, the one player side of the game. There are a few esoteric tricks in various fighting games that are side dependant---that can't be performed on the 2nd player side, for example.
Here's an example of the grayest area of all. Many versions of Street Fighter have "secret characters" that are only accessible through a code. Sometimes these characters are good, sometimes they're not. Occasionally, the secret characters are the best in the game, as in Marvel vs. Capcom. Big deal. That's the way that game is. Live with it. But the first version of Street Fighter to ever have a secret character was Super Turbo Street Fighter with its untouchably good Akuma. Most characters in that game cannot beat Akuma. I don't mean it's a tough match---I mean they cannot ever, ever, ever, ever win. Akuma is "broken" in that his air fireball move is something the game simply wasn't designed to handle. He's miles above the other characters, and is therefore banned in all tournaments. But every game has a "best character" and those characters are never banned. They're just part of the game...except in Super Turbo. It's extreme examples like this that even amongst the top players, and even something that isn't a bug, but was put in on purpose by the game designers, the community as a whole has unanimously decided to make the rule: "don't play Akuma in serious matches."
My Attitude and Adenosine Triphosphate
I've been talking down to the scrub a lot in this article. I'd like to say for the record that I'm not calling the scrub stupid. I'm not saying he can never improve. I am saying that he's naive and that he'll be trapped in scrubdom, whether he realizes it or not, as long as he chooses to live in the mental construct of rules he himself constructed. Is it harsh to call scrubs naive? After all, the vast majority of the world is scrubs. I'd say by the definition I've classified 99.9% of the world's population as scrubs. Seriously. All that means is that 99.9% of the world doesn't know what it's like to play competitive games on a high level. It means that they are naive of these concepts. I really have no trouble saying that since we're talking about esoteric, experience-driven knowledge here. I also know that 99.9% of the world (including me) doesn't know how the citric acid cycle and cellular respiration create 38 ATP molecules per cycle. It's an esoteric thing of which I am unaware, just as many are unaware of competitive games.
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| Biological organisms store energy in the form of ATP molecules. When energy is needed, it's released by breaking the bond of one phosphate, creating ADP. |
In the end, playing to win ends up accomplishing much more than just winning. Playing to win is how one improves. Continuous self-improvement is what all of this is really about, anyway. I submit that ultimate goal of the "playing to win" mindset is ironically not just to win...but to improve. So practice, improve, play with discipline, and play to win.
February 28th, 2006 at 10:44 am
This makes alot of sence, Really good stuff!
March 1st, 2006 at 3:14 am
up untill i read this article, i was a scrub. thank you for releasing me from that prison
March 1st, 2006 at 10:51 am
deep stuff, makes you think twice about what your actually doing when your playing games competitively.
March 3rd, 2006 at 10:51 am
I couldn’t agree more. I just happened to find this site recently and id like to thank you for your insights. The articles on The Art of War are fantastic. Everyone should read some version of that book.
March 6th, 2006 at 4:01 am
Thank you Sirlin! You made me see the difference between playing the game how you think it should be played and playing the game how it can be played.
I have also realized that resisting to use my best “cheap” tactic on my opponent is not only foolish on my behalf, but disrespectful to my opponent as well. It is as if I’m telling him: “You aren’t even good enough for me to use my best tactic”.
March 8th, 2006 at 6:49 am
I shall turn my honorable ways into the path that you have showed me. No longer will i yield to the polite manner that i thought was the respectful way, for i now realize that i was only disrespecting them by not showing them my best gameplay strategy. thank you for showing me the way to truely respect my opponent.
March 8th, 2006 at 9:12 am
Yeah ive told people that so much, that if its in the f***ing game, then your supposed to use it.
March 8th, 2006 at 11:18 am
stop justifying your cheap moves, they don’t take any real skill.
(esoteric joke)
March 9th, 2006 at 3:30 am
STFU SCRUB
March 12th, 2006 at 10:18 am
shut up noob
March 12th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
I know you’re used to hearing this by now, but thanks a lot Sirlin. This article really opened my eyes to my own inherent limitations and my tunnelvision when it came to learning games. Before reading “Playing to Win, Part 1″, I couldn’t explain why I was unable to ever win any games competitively and you woke me up from my stupor.
A good deal of escaping scrubdom I found has to do with faith. You have to believe in the game, believe it WILL grow more and more complex and better. That was the number one thing holding me back — a belief that games by design would all become degenerate nothings without my self-imposed rules. Scrubs have no idea what a game turns into once their blinders are off and they see that new ways of thinking and playing await them, as well as a sort of personal peace of mind that only exists for competitive players.
March 13th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
Well said, and thank you Nina (and everyone else here).
The article was pretty contraversial when it was written, but now it seems that many take it as a given. I polished it all up and said it all better (plus more) in my book, btw.
March 14th, 2006 at 4:41 am
I know how the citric acid creats 38 atp molocules per cycle.
March 19th, 2006 at 6:18 am
Hi Sirlin,
sure, when you just play to win, there´s no reason to leave the best tactic unused.
In your article you´re anticipating the only preference the player has is to win.
But sometimes in StarCraft I try to annoy my opponent with tricky tactics, that won´t cause me to win, but are just nice to watch or require a lot of micro.
Is this crubby behaviour?
March 19th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Malte, you have a love of the game and you’re exploring suble corners of it. In the long term, that extra knowledge of nuance is certainly a help. I wrote this article about that: http://www.sirlin.net/archive/playing-to-win-part-3-not-playing-to-win/
April 1st, 2006 at 3:04 am
I don’t know if the main point of games is to win.
Originally, games were invented for one purpose: to entertain(i.e., have fun).
I think that of course everyone plays games because they want to win,
but the real question is: Why do people want to win?
What factors in to a person’s urge to win a game?
The answer, of course, is they want to have fun.
Winning is fun.
So, if you’re having fun, you’re winning. Yes, you may be losing the game,
but you’re winning the point of the game, you’re accomplishing the point of the game.
No, I’m not saying play to lose, but I’m also not saying play to win.
I’m saying play to have fun, for if you’re not having fun,
why play at all?
April 1st, 2006 at 8:22 pm
Nice stuff. I always get tired when I’m playing one of my game and I pull off something completely awesome and he yells cheap. I’m going to post links to this everywhere I go.
April 6th, 2006 at 4:48 am
Great article. I’m just sad I don’t know how to reply properly, though, since I want to show my appreciation like many other.
Also, British Redcoat pic has extra text in it, though it’s only with FireFox.
April 12th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
I am a scrub,
though my mentality was that of playing to win. Its a bad mix, i let people walk all over me and when they apologise for using the same moves over to beat me i yell at them “if anything keep doing it! i’ll find a way around it” and heaven forbid someone lets me win…
but anywho… before reading this article i thought to myself “its okay for people to use bugs and cheap moves agaisnt me because its the only way i’ll get better” BUT at the same time i myself refused those moves… this article has made me realise;
fighter gamers are proud, stubborn, arrogant, sore winners and poor loosers… and i want to get better… because being a fighter gamer is not just a contest,
it’s a statement.
it says you’re the best.
it says that you have crushed all others who have dared to take you on.
It says that every other single fighter is feeling nothing but shame and defeat and pain because of the ones that beat them down before they knew what hit them
and i want to be one of those people…
i want to cause that pain… ;)
April 13th, 2006 at 12:40 am
I guess im a scrub then =]
i even have Honor tatted on my arm.
everyone has their own thought of how to live. Regardless if you say they are stupid unwritten rules. everyone has their own code wether they think so or not.
April 18th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
I’ll never have mercy on anyone in a game again!
April 19th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
Well, all I can say is that this article is something everybody should read. I play an online game, should you have heard of “C&C - Yuri’s revenge”, there are countless scrubs who say “no rush”, “sell Yuri (a side to chose from)” and “no france”. France is only banned because of long range defense structures, but in building them, they bring strategy. The Yuri side as a whole does too.
The scrubs only restrict themselves with their made up rules, and in turn, it reduces the methods of conquering when it’s a RTS game to begin with!
April 23rd, 2006 at 2:26 am
Wow, finally, someone who agrees with me. I’ve been saying this for years. People in FPSes I play always complain about camping, and every game I’ve come across complains about some dumb tactic. In YR, which i havent played online, everyone complains about Yuri. In Mario Kart DS, which i also haven’t played online, everyone complains about snaking. In MPH, I’ve seen numerous tactics looked down upon. On Quake 3 which i do play, people always complain about camping. I mean, they’re all fair tactics, and I never understood why some people complain about them. They’re open for everyone to use, and most of them aren’t unstoppable, so whats the problem?
April 23rd, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Campers suck.
April 26th, 2006 at 8:51 am
Hey first of all why don’t you guys grow up it’s just a game not a life, which many of you seem laking, and yes I am a gamer but I play for fun cause I win most of the times soo what am I?
April 28th, 2006 at 5:41 am
‘’Hey first of all why don’t you guys grow up it’s just a game not a life, which many of you seem laking, and yes I am a gamer but I play for fun cause I win most of the times soo what am I? ‘’
What you fail to realise is that for alot of competitive fighting gamers
There games ARE life
Some people even live on fighting games
There are people who win tournaments and use the money to live
Games can be a good life just as any other life
Stupid Scrub
May 1st, 2006 at 4:10 am
I don’t know about fighting games and such, but from my experience in BF2…
Noob-tube
Dolphin-diving
Sniperesque PKM
All cheap “tactics” or weapons that eventually got nerfed, and rightly so. Just because something can be countered doesn’t make it automatically fair. Balance is a lot more complicated than that.
May 4th, 2006 at 8:40 pm
Excellent arguments. what can i say?
It’s not just for games or that kind of virtual-world, but it’s also something that aplys to real world. Thanks a lot ;).
May 10th, 2006 at 6:58 am
once i ate paint
May 15th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
Actually, even a non-scrub can determine that a move is cheap. But a scrub would complain and quit the game in anger, whereas a non-scrub would see that cheap move and either copy it, or find a strat to counter it. But sometimes there are broken aspects to games that NEED to be fixed, but either can’t for whatever reason (no online patches) or the devs are idiots.
Bugs that allow you to break the physics of the game don’t “add new levels of play” to the game, they just screw it up and break the game. If your only justification is that “why don’t YOU do it too?” then it shouldn’t be in the game. I’d rather play with my own style (like in an FPS, I’d rather have a slow, accurate, powerful weapon than a fast spraying weak one) but if you can break the game by using a glitch to get a fast AND powerful weapon, then the game isn’t balanced and it sucks. You’re not a scrub if you see that.
May 21st, 2006 at 2:17 am
Agree with KuroiNeko. Most PC/console games offer a PVP mode as an afterthought, with poorly thought out player interaction making for shitty game balance. Street Fighter serves as a good example for this article because it was built from the ground up with PVP in mind. Most online RPG’s however are built as PVM/Questing games, with PVP on the side, and as a consequence they suffer from huge amounts of single dominating strategy abuse/exploitation.
May 22nd, 2006 at 6:50 pm
I just have to say sir that you’re many articles have honestly changed the way I look at and play games. I never realized how much foresight and thinking goes into a fighting game until I read your RPS article and realized that I think about all those things without realizing it while playing fighting games such as VF4, Tekken 5, Street Fighter III: Third Stirke, and Super Smash Bros. Melee.
Also, in Halo, I used to berate people who used “cheap” tactics to win, but after reading you first playing to win article, I realized that they were just using good strategy. The way I see it, you play as if YOU are the person in the game, and you really don’t want to die, so you do what you have to do to win, and if “whoring” a weapon or camping in a position is what it takes than so be it (I do think spawn camping is still wrong because although it wins games, in Halo 2 you have no chance to defend yourself if someone is sniping you and you spawn with the default smg which has no range whatsoever, but that’s just bad design on Bungie’s part).
May 26th, 2006 at 3:15 am
Big article, but now once I show this to my friends, we can be the cheapest cheap spammers on the planet! Yay! (Some of my friends already are cheap, so showing everyone this article gives me permission to be extremely cheap.)
May 29th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
The section titled “Boundaries of Playing to Win” is contradictory to the argument you are making. Your definition of a scrub is someone who doesn’t take advantage of a game feature because he feels it cheapens the gameplay. A good player, by definition, doesn’t believe in this behavior. He is only playing to win. So why wouldn’t a good player abuse moves that only player 1 can do and pick Akuma in Super Turbo Street Fighter every single time? Wouldn’t a good player exploit game bugs that allow him to fly and teleport in an FPS game when that is not intended to be part of the gameplay?
According to your definition the only difference between a scrub and a good player is how far they are willing to go to win. A good player will go a little bit farther. But going too far is cheating. That is the mindset of a scrub, not a good player, is it not?
The point that both good players and scrubs can agree on is that if using every tactic available makes a game boring to play then that game is not worth playing. However, the scrub is willing to construct rules to make the game fun for him and other scrubs while good players will quickly move on to another game. According to your article many top players are scrubs.
May 29th, 2006 at 11:41 pm
#34: Your post doesn’t make sense. A scrub doesn’t do anything that might be considered cheating, because he doesn’t know the difference between using all available moves (that any player can use) and using all available but tournament-illegal moves (that only cheaters use). Some people ask questions like yours because they don’t understand that difference. Many people bristle at the idea that a legitimate and available move is an acceptable move, no matter how “cheap” it appears, because those people don’t want to accept the possibility that they are scrubs. Are you one of those people?
May 30th, 2006 at 5:06 am
#34: Imagine it like ‘There is no illegal combination of legal actions as long as it doesn’t stop the game from working.’ (even if some tournaments can be ’scrubby’ by definition from below, just because you have to agree on common rules deciding ‘how the game probably should be played’, e.g. Time Limit in BeUs)
I think what everyone should understand from the article is that games have their own world with their own rules. Not the rules we want them to have, and not the rules we think they were planned to have. As an example an imaginary FPS game: There is the obligatory high-range/high-precision/high-power weapon, one chargeable and one with rapid-fire-bursts. If there is some kind of glitch that allows you to charge the second one (legal), switch to the rapid gun (legal) and fire a burst (legal) of the charged-shots instead of the regular ones (result), it might be superior to the long range gun. If that is the case it is part of the game. You are free to forbid it in your tournament, or to use it to win. If ‘your playing style’ is to use sniper weapons and it doesn’t work here, it is not cheap. Those are the rules of the game, they don’t need to be as you imagine the game designer to want them or as you imagine them to be balanced/reasonable.
May 30th, 2006 at 11:09 am
FreddieD: Think of it as a trial, everything in the game is innocent until proven guilty of being banworthy according to criteria similar to the one outlined in sirlins articles. Akuma was tried and proven guilty with a wide body of evidence and testing throughout the past number of years. Occasionally the top players, the scrubs, the observers, and anyone with common sense will all come together, and say “ok ok this thing really does need to be banned”, but it’s rare, and the bar is insanely high.
The mistake many make is that this is a long and hard campaign. Saying it isn’t nearly enough, convincing yourself isn’t enough, it’s a lot more than that. Banning akuma in ST is drastically different than people playing a fighting game casually for 2 days and deciding to ban things before they even realize how to play.
May 30th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
Very interesting article. However, the line between exploits/bugs that are “legal” and those that are “cheating” can be really blurry. In fact, I would say there is no line at all.
I can understand the reasoning behind the usage of “cheap” tactics; they exist in the game as they were intended by the game’s developers. As such, they should be perfectly legal to use. But bugs and exploits are things that are clearly not intended and exist as exceptions to the rules that were intended to balance the game. They have the potential to completely compromise what would otherwise be a complex and well-balanced game and render it a simple exploit-fest.
Even if you are playing to win, you should avoid the usage of “features” that are undeniably bugs/exploits. Once you start exploiting the code, you are no longer just “playing to win,” you’re cheating.
June 1st, 2006 at 3:52 am
I agree with #16. I rather lose in a fun match than winning in a boring match (in casuals). In tournaments….ummm… I need to adjust to be very cheap. I need to learn how to be very cheap when it comes to tournaments. I don’t know if winning the tourney = fun for me if I used more cheap tactics. Sometimes I don’t care about winning (I’m still a scrub). I believe video games are for entertainment, fun, and get to meet players who shared the same passion as you. When two players have the same competitive passion, thus competition is infinite and also a lot of fun and entertainment.
Competition = Fun = Entertainment = The passion to be a better player (Mind & Body)
June 3rd, 2006 at 12:32 am
“Competition = Fun = Entertainment = The passion to be a better player (Mind & Body)”
Exactly, and this is best seen at high level competitions, when you play to win it helps bring out the best in everyone. I find it stupid for people to say, “oh, youve learned that “cheap” tecnique, you should stop yourself from loosing something you learned because i cant defend against it” I mean wtf? thats retarted, learn to defend it, it will help you become a better player.
June 4th, 2006 at 11:04 pm
Great article, it has opened my mind to totally new and whorry ways to win. But if you think about it, why not use the best tactic possible? You do want to survive, right?
Think of it this way, the development of certain strats are essential to a games evolution. You think a saber toothed tiger yelled “Cheap!” to early man when he used a spear, or invented the wheel?! I think not.
June 6th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
Easily the most elegant and clearly written article on this subject matter I’ve ever read. I’m a competitive RTS player and face these same situations with ’scrubs’ day after day. I’ve written countless articles stressing the EXACT points addressed here in this article, but no where near the clarity with which this one has been written.
Truely an amazing article. I agree with it 100%, and could not have said it any better.
June 7th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
Sirlin,
You already know what I think of your articles (and your book).
I’m planning on buying a hard cover copy and to give my paperback to a good friend. Keep designing and keep going through with this kind of great insight.
June 14th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
I’m a scrub… Maybe even worse than that since I know it and wouldn’t want to change my way for anything.
I have my set of rules (my prison) but you have yours too. You say that you use tournament rules… Well to me (and following your logic) it means that you imprison yourself. The best way to win is to cheat to break the rules whatever they are. So the only difference between a scrub and you is where you put the limit… big deal!
I play by my own rules (honor or whatever), you play with yours (tournament rules) and someone really playing to win plays with no rules at all… and cheats with all means.
You obviously don’t play to win. Welcome in the world of scrubs!
June 15th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Sirlin, may I translate your article to portuguese, for a brazilian website? Of course I’ll keep your URL in there, so users are familiar with english can check the original piece and the other articles as well. We could use some of your wisdow around here. I will be waiting for your answer. Thank you for the brilliant articles
June 19th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
spoken like a true noob, useing a bug in a game is a exploit, exploit = lame, lame = not fun, i r0x cuz i can pwn you with lame cheap noobness… if we play evenly i get wtfpwned… omg i pwn… its not about honour its about not being a asshole
June 20th, 2006 at 7:52 am
Tc i like trains
June 21st, 2006 at 11:36 am
I wonder how many connections can be made between “scrubs” and “n00bs.” Hmm, perhaps the two groups are identical…
The “n00bs” indeed create their own mental rules… they must talk in retardese, anyone better than them has no skill, they are more important than god, and anyone smarter than them is a stupid fag.
I think I have an idea for an essay…
June 22nd, 2006 at 11:33 pm
Your articles are great. Anyway, this is totally off-topic. I couldn’t seem to find your article about the KFC combo in this new site. Well, twas not really an article, but it’s hilarious! Just wondering if you could give me the link
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:14 am
Looking for information and found it at this great site…
June 24th, 2006 at 5:14 am
Nice site… Cool guestbook…
June 24th, 2006 at 7:09 pm
Nice article, but overlooks one pretty important point I had to learn the hard way a bunch of times. Ironically, it was on Streetfighter I first learned it. I played the Sumo using ‘no skill’ moves in very fast combos until I was banned from playing him. I like him and that sucked, but they were easily transferable to other characters until I was banned from playing. Not officially, simply in that no-one would play me. Streetfighter parties - winner plays on, everyone havin fun but me cos after many straight wins I’m out for the night.
Was same story with Mortal Kombat, cept I was a bit smarter by then and tried keep it toned down. Sweeps and rabbit attack combos at my speed meant I could always win any time I felt like it against anyone I had ever played. Got to enjoy the game for weeks until in a moment of public weakness I cracked it while copping an over-enthusiastic brag and laughed that they didn’t realise I could beat them any time I wanted. Forced myself into a corner where I had to prove it. So I proved it by the 3rd game having taken no damage, but the scrubs of course insisted on about 8 before conceding the point. And got my just reward - noone in that arcade would ever play me at that again and I got stuck having to WATCH a lot of woeful Mortal Kombat play instead.
I learned then, a good 15 years ago, that often the winning move is not to play to win, but to hide yourself in a scrubskin, unless you define winning as sitting in a corner by yourself, knowing you are the best at the games you can’t play. Online gaming came out since then with numbers large enough to actually expose that 0.1% finally, and the ability to change your face at will for the 99.9% (smurfing), but breaking the hiding routine has been such a repeated habit that it won’t die hard, and also those old lessons ring true again here and there (an article in itself…).
June 27th, 2006 at 9:26 am
I’ve always thought this, and it’s nice to see it out there.
June 27th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
#44: Lol troll.
#52: One of his other Playing to win articles he talks about the type of situation you faced.
Sirlin, good article.
July 11th, 2006 at 11:15 am
Crazy approves of this article. Good work!
July 12th, 2006 at 11:28 am
This is great stuff, of course, but I’m not so sure about the Akuma ban or the side-specific glitches.
In Japan, as you know, Akuma is soft-banned. However, what you may not know is that sometimes a good player will pick Akuma, and he will do fairly well but get rocked by an elite sooner or later.
This can be seen in one of the Master Secret Cup tournaments on Combovideos. In the 1v1 tournament, an Akuma made the final 16. At this point, the players were split into two round-robin pools of 8, with the top 2 from each pool moving on to the semi-finals.
Well, the Akuma lost to everyone in his pool except for the one Zangief, all using different characters IIRC. And he was no scrub either…from what I could tell in the video, he was well above-average by American standards (not sure how well this compares to Japan).
And as for the side-specific stuff - In Hokuto no Ken, Mr. Heart has useful infinites on certain characters if you pick him on the 2P side. Japan does not ban this; instead, the two players must have a rock/paper/scissors match, with the winner picking the side. This is also how they handle side/stage-picking in other games.
Just some food for thought.
July 13th, 2006 at 1:45 am
I think this article is totally in the wrong. Games are supposed to be fun, and you cannot have fun if both players are sitting at the opposite side of the arena waiting for the other to attack while occasionally throwing items at each other. That doesn’t sound fun to me.
July 13th, 2006 at 4:40 am
#57: Your opinion about what’s fun doesn’t make the article wrong, silly.
July 15th, 2006 at 4:06 am
#58: Your opinion about what’s fun doesn’t make the article wrong, silly.
Well, Sirlin automatically assumes that winning = fun. Okay then..
So you’re honestly saying that throwing your opponent over and over again just to win is fun? In the case you described, where you could get some interesting battles if your opponent knew some countermoves, I bet you’re right. If you were up against a scrub, though, it would only be fun if it was in a tournament. Perhaps fun is not the right word, but at least you would get a reward than just the ‘I’m-the-best’-brag-right. Which is quite useless in the real life.
I have an example from Battlefield 2. Lots of servers run a no baseraping rule, which I partly agree with, but it really depends on which map. Take the Wake-map for instance. US can either start on an island or the aircraft carrier so that’s 2 spawnpoints without a direct landroute to the flags which is a major disadvantage. Now if just one player from the other team continues to bomb/attack at least just the carrier with a plane of theirs so there’s no chance of the US ever taking over a flag, that’s ruining the game. What’s the challenge in that?
Sirlin hinted, that trying to adapt to a new challenge is fun, though he didn’t say it directly, but, as I mentioned first, if your opponent had some countermoves against your original tactic, you had to counter that etc, and that could lead to some very interesting fights. But if there is no challenge and you just use the same ‘cheap’ tactics to win, where’s the fun in that? I have fun if I play the game MY way, not by using the best/cheapest strategy to win.
As I see it, it also seems like Sirlin believes that scrubs have a very rigid playstyle. That is, they never adapt, develop new strategies or learn new things. I consider myself a scrub (if I were to classify myself with either of the 2 described in the article), yet I for one will always try to rethink a little each time I lose. What can I do better next time, what did I do wrong etc. But I always use a strategy within the limits of fairness (like the spawnraping example from BF2 would not be a fair strategy). That might sounds exactly like the type of scrub Sirlin described. So what? Granted I’m not the best player by far, I still have lots of fun while playing a game.
Oh, and just another small thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_Law
July 20th, 2006 at 3:48 am
59: “Sirlin automatically assumes that winning = fun.”
I don’t read that at all. What I read here, and agree with, is that PLAYING TO WIN, against others also PLAYING TO WIN, is more fun than playing in a random fashion without true tactics or the full measure of skill being employed on both sides. Playing to win is going for the throat. When I play against experienced players, and we are all playing to win, and I lose after a game where both sides played to the best of their ability, I enjoy it MORE than when I play to the best of my ability against a new player or against a scrub and completely destroy them. It’s extremely fun to have a good game against good players. It’s sometimes sort of a little fun to have a game with random players who use random abilities at random times to sort of try to win without actually trying to defeat me to the best of their abilities. If two people play to less than the best of their abilities, you might as well have a coin flip to decide who wins, and neither player will improve much. If two players play to the best of their abilities, the game will be decided by any random factors that may be inherent to the system (i.e. damage ranges, critical strikes and hits, whatever) along with player skill, and the winning and losing player will like as not both learn from the match if it was remotely even.
In short- Playing to win against others also playing to win with anywhere near equal skill levels is amazingly fun, regardless of whether you win or not. Playing otherwise (Pro vs. a new player or scrub vs. scrub) is inherently less fun. The best action for a pro to do with a new player is to teach them, until they are at least intermediate and are thus a more worthy opponent who will have fun fighting you to the best of their abilities as you have fun fighting them to the best of yours.
July 20th, 2006 at 5:40 am
#59: In his article “Playing to Win, Part 0: Why Bother? (http://www.sirlin.net/archive/playing-to-win-0/#more-42), Sirlin discusses what some might consider “fun” at lower levels of skill, and says “If those things are enough for you, then just get out of here now. Go on. This site isn’t for you.” He also says “Playing for “fun” and playing to win are wildly different pursuits,” which contradicts your assertion that he thinks winning = fun. If you’re going to tell us what Sirlin says, do it properly. It doesn’t take that much research, you just have to know how to search a few web pages for the word “fun” if you’re really trying to understand what Sirlin means by it. Mmmkay then….
If you’re really saying “But playing hard against beginners (or my girlfriend) is mean. I play down to their level so it will be close,” then read his response in http://www.sirlin.net/archive/playing-to-win-part-2-mailbag/#more-49.
If you stop being offended by these articles and projecting your own emotions into them, you might learn something. Otherwise, this site isn’t for you, and you should maybe take his advice about moving on. Unless you’re trolling, in which case, I guess you got me.
July 21st, 2006 at 3:32 pm
When I used the terms “playing for fun” versus “playing to win,” I didn’t *mean* to imply that playing to win isn’t ever fun. As #60 Shrike says, a good match between two highly skilled players is usually fun, unless the game degenerates at high levels. So, the “playing to win” player is likely to find fun in a good game.
When I say “playing for fun,” I’m trying to refer to a player who has no deep intention of winning hard matches and is just casually in it “for fun” only. This would be like me playing a match of Mario Kart or something. I have no grand plan to become a top Mario Kart competitor and seek out the best Mario Kart players in the world. I do, from time to time, play the game against friends who are as bad as I am though. Ironically, though we are playing “for fun,” we’re surely having much less fun that expert players have against each other.
–Sirlin
P.S. I’m more likely to play Meteos or Metroid Pinball than Mario Kart. I should have said one of those instead.
July 22nd, 2006 at 9:23 am
I was tempted to point out that there really are problems with the attitude this article seems to espouse, and a grain of truth in some of the more “scrubby” arguments, but I did some more reading first. Everyone here needs to read this as well:
http://www.sirlin.net/archive/playing-to-win-part-3-not-playing-to-win/
…if they have not already done so, because it is clear that Sirlin gets it - He pretty much said what I was going to say, so I’ll try not to repeat it too much here. To sum up, you need to take a longer view, and think about more than just “playing to win”, or the strategy will backfire.
For me, my top level gaming days are over, sadly; I just don’t have the time - Though I still like to play a little bit here and there, mianly 2D fighters and FPSs with the occasional RTS thrown in, in the hopes of retaining the ability to scare the hell out of the younger players from time to time, just as a reminder :)
Back in the day, I loved Street Fighter II and the many, many related titles it inspired. At the risk of being immodest, I believe I was very good at it at my peak. I did indeed get annoyed by “cheap” tactics because, frankly speaking, they’re pretty damn annoying the first time you see them - But not once you work out a counter and / or return the favor :) That’s the point, really - Don’t quit, adjust. Hell, I got mad plenty of times when my opponent *wasn’t* being “cheap”, ’cause I wanted to win and was pissed I didn’t…
I got accused of cheap tactics too, most often when playing the Samurai Shodown series… I can safely say I was at my absolute peak in terms of fighting games with Gray Ukyo in SS2 (and yes, the Gray is f&*/ing *critical* ;), man that was fun… 71 consecutive wins in PvP after which no one would play me and I ended the day by beating the game without losing a round, all on one credit - Got the good ending with the cool music, the soccer ball, Team Garapagos, the works. I forget whether I fought Kuroko that time around, but I did find a bug - If you never lose in that long a period of gameplay, you never get to put your name up! I was pissed. I also beat my roommate blindfolded and one-handed one time (and yes, with special moves - no joke, that was on my home system), though to be fair he didn’t know how to play very well :) That’s the point, though - Sometimes it’s not about winning so much as seeing what you can accomplish when you challenge yourself. If I had lost, that would’ve been fine, it was anyway pretty close :) The next challenge would’ve been to turn the sound off, that’s how I was able to tell something of what was going on - But that’s neither here nor there.
For me, I want to win, but I also have a deep appreciation for those games where I have choices as to how I do so, and am not forced to adopt the one and only “best” tactic because of balance issues (goes back to why Akuma was banned even though this is an exception to the logic of the first part of this article taken to its logical conclusion). As a kid playing tic-tac-toe I figured out a way to ensure that I would always either win or draw every single game. Not so interesting after that… Imagine if someone were to “solve” the game of chess? That’s unlikely but not unthinkable, given how good computers have become at it, and if and when it happens, anyone able to memorize the appropriate lines of play will be unbeatable. That’d certainly take a lot of the fun out of it as well…
I guess the bottom line for me is that we all have at least some desire to win, but even those of us who *really* want to win generally desire a means to be creative and expressive and stylish and individualistic in doing so. If a game allows us to do that, it’s a good one. If we’re not allowed to do that, this is a real loss, even if we can still beat the stuffing out of our opponent.
Why? Because winning is about *individual* recognition. How much of that can you expect if you play the same “winning” strategy as everyone else but that day you happen to play it 0.1% better than the competition? If you win like that, are you really “the best”, or are you just providing evidence that the game has been “solved” and it now comes down to who ate their Wheaties that morning vs. who had a girlfriend to go out and party with the previous night? (Hint to otaku - GO OUTSIDE! ;)
Finally, since an analogy to the guerilla tactics of the American Revolution was made, I’d also like to point out that this logic in the wrong domain can indeed get ugly and indefensible wit a quickness. For instance, one could argue that we don’t fight our wars to “win” because we abide by the Geneva Conventions (well, mostly). That argument was made during the Vietnam war just as it is being made now. Along the same lines, Terrorism - And there is a fine line between guerilla tactics and terrorism - Makes perfect sense if you want to “win” but do not have the manpower to do so by following the “rules” / not being “cheap”. In other words, “playing to win” can get horrific really fast when human lives are at stake. Anyone remember “Heart of Darkness” / “Apocalypse Now”? (There *will* be a test)
With that in mind, before anyone reading this thinks to apply it to their outlook on life as a whole and use it as carte blanche to do whatever they want to achieve their aims, take notice - That’s NOT what’s being said here. That kind of attitude in real life makes you a real *sshole, and gives us people like Ken Lay, Jack Abramoff, and Osama bin Laden - Definitely not winners, but people willing to do just about anything to “win”. If only they all got caught and punished…
Arc_Light
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:01 pm
I can only aggree with the author of this article.
There is an old first person shooter which has been played for 10 years now.
Quakeworld! :-)
Anyone looking for serious first person shoot should check it out.
/smerz
July 23rd, 2006 at 12:46 pm
I think in the near future, I’ll be playing to win by tickling my son with my feet in order to beat him in Street Fighter. ;-)
July 24th, 2006 at 1:25 pm
Well said Arc_Light. Remember though, if people can’t seperate in their own minds when it is important to win and when it is important to let your little cousin have fun at your expense, then they have bigger issues then this article can deal with. I for one can let my little cousin go to work on me in Tekken so that he can learn a bit more. Anyone who wants to beat the stuffing out of someone so far below their ability isn’t really achieving anything….not even a win that counts.
July 24th, 2006 at 11:18 pm
Street Fighter 2 and philosophy! Two of my favorite subjects!
While I think that fundamentally the original author is correct, I have a problem with the way he phrases his argument because it borders on irrationality and tends to sound like one of those uninformed “pep talks” you heard from your coach when you played basketball in middle school.
“Play to win no matter what” sounds like George Bush’s “Do whatever it takes” or even Ronald Reagan’s “Greed is good.” In my opinion, the problem with these statements, particularly the last one, is not that they are inherently “evil” or morally wrong, but that they are unqualified and do not take into account perspective.
Take “greed is good.” First of all, we have to ask, greed is good for who, the individual or the society? The answer could be that greed is bad for either or for neither. Let’s look at the individual first. For some people, who care about nothing but getting rich, then greed is good for them. For others, who have a revulsion to ripping people off, or losing friends, then greed tends to be bad. What about society? For some situations, a society filled with idividuals only doing “greedy” acts is good, it provides a net benefit to the society as a whole, but for other situations it is bad.
Let’s take being a stock trader. Most of these people are “in it for the money.” They buy and sell, trying to rip off both the person they bought from and the person they sell to. Some people couldn’t do this job, because it requires cut throat greedy actions that the majority of use aren’t comfortable with. But since we assume all the traders are equally greedy, they are playing on even footing. As for society, it benefits because the combination of all of these greedy actions results in a “market price” that “non-players” or “casual players” can generally trust. Thus, you can put your savings in an institutional investor and watch your money gain interest at a relatively stable rate. But if it wasn’t for those greedy individuals ripping each other off at the base, institutional investment would be impossible. Thus this sort of “greedy” behavior should be encouraged, at least for a small group of people in the society.
On the other hand, there are some rules in stock trading. Insider information is illegal for instance. Lying about your companies profits are also illegal. These rules are in place because if they weren’t, the entire system would break down, Ken Lay and Enron being one of the best examples. Thus, in the “game” of stock trading, while greed is beneficial for the society within a certain set of rules, outside of these rules it is detrimental. How do we know how to define the rules? Mainly by trail and error.
Thinkers on the right tend to take the unqualified “Greed is good” and run away with it, which obviously has negative implications. Thinkers on the left, though, often take the equally irrational “greed is bad” approach, which leads to equally negative outcomes. The truth is that greed is good, for some individuals, and for some societies, in some situations.
The same can be said for playing to win and Street Fighter 2. Those guys who play to win and use every trick in the book are analogous to greedy stock traders. But in the end they end up advancing the game for the better. The SF fans (like me, who strangely enjoy watching tournament videos) and the general pool of aspiring champions benefits in the long run from from their cut throat tactics, even if other players will be frustrated for a few games (get ripped off by the more knowledgable trader) as they try to learn the counter-strategies. Those people that pick Akuma (the Ken Lays), however, are stepping over the bounds and the game breaks down. Fortunately, its easy to tell who picks Akuma - he gets banned immediately. It’s not as easy to tell who is trying to inflate stocks. Ah, if only “real world” games were as simple as SF2 =)
Baka
July 25th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
I can completely dis agree with this articule
Everything said here is pretty much a huge excuse for why it is important to win everything in the world…..
Basically thats the idea that your saying……its important to win at “any cost” so in most cases your saying that people are supposed to use glitches and exploits to win at any game.
In most cases the fabric of gaming itself has become broken due to everyone’s perspective that winning is everything. The purpose pf games is to have fun, not win at all costs. The idea im getting is that in your articule you have been talking about scrubs this and scrubs that, its all just really bs, “play with discipline” my ass……
“the expert player is not bound by rules of “honor” or “cheapness” and simply plays to maximize his chances of winning.”
This contradicts that statement all the way
“I am saying that scrubs are naive and that he’ll be trapped in scrubdom, whether he realizes it or not, as long as he chooses to live in the mental construct of rules he himself constructed. Is it harsh to call scrubs naive?
In a ways yes….because apparently the “scrub” as you call him and have said doesnt know all the techniques and crap in the games, HOWEVER that does not mean he is just a simple punching bag for the taking…basically pro/expert players will just go on and bash him to death…..and really your saying this is ok when in reality its not….see you dont believe in a fair match, you dont think people deserve a fair match, and in terms you dont really care if people get a fair match..in your mind people who dont know all the perameters in a game (glitches or otherwise) are nothing but useless people…and this is really all your articule is about….saying that people you play against that call you cheap or what not….all im getting from this is that your basically tired of of people who complain about a games mechanics being broken or cheap….so its mostly a complaint to send out to the world, and in most cases its like saying scrubs will always be scrubs no matter what…and in a majority your trying to make people see the fact that you need to constently win no matter what…and basically the desire to win in a variety of games is why the fabric of gaming is a little muffled, people are being led to believe that winning is everything…….despite the things you do….
People who are already experts have an annoying tendancy to be jackasses about how they win matches as well…the casual “so what I still whooped your ass” comments are the most obvious ones…..and really I dont see why anyone would want to drop that low to become the best…..its like a wrestling match over and over again…trash talk….beat ass…and what not……..
#26
Sure there are gamers that live on playing games…….but so what? To me thats just saying they couldn’t get a real career and just got stuck on playing video games for the rest of their life.
July 26th, 2006 at 4:57 am
Baka suggests Sirlin proposes things he isn’t really proposing, just so Baka can make a point about what’s important to him. That’s all fine, but if someone actually believes Sirlin proposes winning at all costs, they should read more of his articles before passing judgment (as Arc_Light wisely did). Sirlin’s book specifically acknowledges that “Exploring extreme ‘corner cases’ of a game is what high-level play is all about. Exploring extreme situations in life can easily be socially unacceptable, morally wrong, and illegal.” He has also explained, several times over, why playing to win is fun, at least for some of us. Just because you view high-level play as being greedy doesn’t mean he does. It’s easy to understand your view if you’ve been handed your a** on a platter several times by someone better than you. If you were the one doing all the winning, you might understand that sometimes, you want to put a lesser player out of his misery so you can move on to better competition. The lesser player can either ask for help, or look for people his level to share in whatever type of “fun” he prefers. (I’m not accusing Baka of being a loser, but as Sirlin also recognizes, it’s hard enough being the best at one single thing, so you can understand why so many people have trouble seeing things from a true winner’s perspective. A valedictorian in a room full of idiots is probably bored out of his mind and wishes he had better friends, even if he dearly loves those idiots and helps them with their math homework.)
Speaking of idiots, Neos surely is one. He’s probably also 13 years old, so I’ll leave him alone.
July 26th, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Hi all,
Upon further reflection, it seems to me that a truly great player not only knows how to play to win, but *when* to do so. Even if someone has both the knowledge and the ability to pull out all the stops, be it in a video game or in real life, doesn’t mean they should automatically do it all of the time. Doing so in real life would probably mean the end of civilized society - Not to mention that such discipline is also a key aspect of much of the martial arts and philosophy that have inspired fighting games in the first place. Alternativelly, I refer you to one of our modern-day philosophers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3519YOMvgc
I think what bothers some about this particular article, in the absence of additional reading, is that it is that it’s written in such a way that it seems Sirlin is espousing that one should “play to win” absolutely all of the time. What I appreciate is that he takes a step back from that and presents things in a more realistic fashion in a later piece on the same subject - Without some of the more philosophical points made here, granted, but with some more general concepts shared nevertheless.
At the risk of repeating myself, then, I think it is key that people not just read this one article; doing so may irritate some (I would’ve been one of them had I not kept reading), and may inspire others to take this attitude to ridiculous extremes (I hope not, but seem people just *have* to keep it real). With that in mind, a very obvious link to the other article I mentioned:
http://www.sirlin.net/archive/playing-to-win-part-3-not-playing-to-win/
…coupled with a strong recommendation to go read it before commenting might IMHO be an appropriate addition to this piece, in that it would add a level of balance otherwise missing from this article *on its own* and might cut down on the amount of “j00 5uxx0r” comments as well - Not that there’s absolutely no room for criticism, but better that it be informed criticism.
PS - Baka, did you used to play Guile a lot? :)
Arc_Light
July 27th, 2006 at 2:22 am
#69
I rest my case
August 3rd, 2006 at 12:32 pm
“The art of war” as applied to gaming!
Well said Sirlin, I thank you for opening so many eyes.
August 3rd, 2006 at 3:23 pm
what a a baby!
August 4th, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Heh good article. Wish I knew about this one before. It opened my mind a little more on this and find this good reference material whenever I’m called cheap again. I really like the first part of the article for this, but I’m probably stubborn on the later part and really don’t like that: The “Boundaries of Playing to Win” part illustrates a scrub again and you should know it :/, it is pointed out before (#34), but let me take it from the article to illustrate to the fullest:
“Most characters in that game cannot beat Akuma. I don’t mean it’s a tough match—I mean they cannot ever, ever, ever, ever win. Akuma is “broken” in that his air fireball move is something the game simply wasn’t designed to handle.”
“extreme examples like this that even amongst the top players, and even something that isn’t a bug, but was put in on purpose by the game designers, the community as a whole has unanimously decided to make the rule: “don’t play Akuma in serious matches.”
That’s scrub thinking. It’s in the game and so it can be used to win. It screws up the high level of play, that’s for sure. But it’s in the game design, so it’s the design fault that screws it up for high level of play. Use your own analysis on that one :
“But if it really is the game’s fault, there are plenty of other games that are excellent at a high level of play. For games that truly aren’t good at a high level, the only winning move is not to play.”
Go play some other version of SF2 instead of Turbo, please?
Now what is cheating and what is not, should in my opinion be that using other software, hardware or break the actual hardware, to modify the normal game’s workings is not legal.
This should be in the “Boundaries of Playing to Win” as this is the real form of cheating imo.
It’s obviously very common in network games, as the person can modify his client by software, modify network packages to mislead other clients, or unplug his internet connection before losing a match, so it won’t register the loss, etc. However I can also imagine screwing up one side of the arcade cabinet, some other person’s controller beforehand, etc. as cheating.
Like you would cheat with a board game of Stratego by marking the back of your opponents pieces beforehand, so you know where the key pieces are to always win the game:) That stuff should be in the “Boundaries of Playing to Win”, not that Akuma crap.
(forgive me for any spelling/grammar errors. English was never my best subject in school, neither is it my native language to speak in my country)
cheers
August 4th, 2006 at 8:05 pm
I’ve been playing competitive games ever since i could remember, and i play to win.
All my friends/opponenets would say stuff like “stop doing that” and I’d reply “If its in the game then I’m gonna use it, Maybe you should learn to block.”
I’ve had this moto for years
And I love how deep into it this article goes
I’ve notice all these things from the unwritten code of Honor
(which i still chose Ruby Heart, B.B. Hood and Bison in MvC2)
To the Trickey Glitches that should be banned
(*cough*Cable hahahaa JK, but I’mma Ruby Frezze it, 2nd flight is a charm LoL)
To the ones that shouldn’t be banned
(that Ice man Trick for super is pretty hard its a just framer, i tried to show myfriend that used ICEMAN pretty well, but he must of forgot the next day)
And the DOG was almost broken in XX and #R
I swear i heard the guy from A-Cho scream OH SHIT THE DOG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! for ZAppa (Guity Gear is a top tier game)
loved the article
Piece >,..,
August 6th, 2006 at 6:41 am
Interesting artical, tbh i agree greatly with most of what you have said here however i have found a few things that i find odd.
From my expiriance being good and playing to win do not go hand in hand, i know some people, myself included, who at some games no matter how determined they are and no matter how much they practise, and ‘play to win’ they are never as good as others at certain games. You might say this is part of the scrub mindset i would dissagree since ive always tried my hardest and understanding that it is just a game helps if i fail a lot. Consequencely i never call things cheap or lame unless i feel myself in a sufficient position to do so.
I understand some things that people object tot and others i do not, camping is always going to be a controversial issue in fps games. In a game like counterstirke for example if everyone camped all matches would be boring and uneventful. However in ohers, battlefield 2 with snipeing, camping is actually part of the game and noone really minds because the games are still interesting as people are forced to take the flags if they want to win, whereas your average cs player mearly cares about his score. But of course that would take to long to explain so ill leave off by saying: you got everythint else right.
August 7th, 2006 at 1:14 am
As someone in the entertainment software QA field, I know plenty about bugs and “broken” gameplay concepts. As such, I labeled people who you describe as “true experts” as robots. They gravitate to games like Tekken 5 and like to play matches with the same juggle 4 times until the round ends.
As such I have taken a totally opposite, yet equal stance. I play fighting games, to see the whole game, not focus on two broken moves that end the match quickly and provide either player with little other than an a informal test plan.
My mentality, is to use everything in the game provided to have fun and provide a challenge to both players, while using ALL the moves created by the developer. There are many moves that these “true experts” refuse to use because they take away from the safe, played-out moves. I use “kelpto moves”, or moves that are traditionally considered so worthless that if they actually connect then your dignity has just been stolen. Play as a robot with cookie cutter FAQ combos as much as you want. 9/10 those people are having no actual enjoyment of the action they are taking apart of, because they are so lost in their “high-end tourny” mentality, much like people that spend hours raiding for items in WoW even though they subconciously hate it.
Of course, since video gaming in general has degraded so much since the golden days, everyone looks at anything with competition involved as an opportunity to stroke their ego and nothing else.
While I disagree with the absoluteness of your claims, your ability to explain this rare, almost OCD-like mentality of certain people is fairly accurate.
August 7th, 2006 at 5:27 am
I help organzie and run (and compete in!) the Evolution Fighting Game Championships, the largest fighting game series in the USA. The last two years, there have been competitors from about 30 different countries competing in 8 different games. www.evo2k.com
The very best players of fighting games are having a great deal of fun when they play at the highest level and have to coutner other players playing at that level. Any comment saying otherwise is just misinformed. There is no need to theorize about whether expert players are having fun or not…just go to this event and see it for yourself.
–Sirlin
August 7th, 2006 at 8:55 am
Questions for #78:
1) If the game is only about 2 broken moves, why are you playing it instead of moving on to something worthwhile?
2) Are you helping to put out these games with 2 broken moves and then suggesting that people try the other moves the designers intended that they use? Shouldn’t you just admit that you like exploring, and exploring sometimes takes you out of the competition?
3) If you’re in any way responsible for releasing good games, shouldn’t you be bragging that no game with 2 broken moves would ever be released on your watch? Shouldn’t you also brag that the games you help release are designed well enough that playing to win will require more than using 2 broken moves? Even if your “entertainment software” has nothing to do with video games, wouldn’t you answer “yes” to these questions, because any other answer reveals that you don’t really know how to win any game worth winning?
August 8th, 2006 at 7:56 am
I believe that even in video games, a certain etiquette should always be maintained. I’m not saying that there is honor in video games, which could be argued as false. If there is a bug in a game, unless agreed upon in the beginning of a match or battle, they oughta be left out of use. Granted, in real life, etiquette towards one’s opponent is often misplaced with a need for destruction and violence and, essentially, any excuse to win. I, however, believe that even my most undesirable of enemies deserves the full respect of a fair fight, even if he feels I do not deserve the same such respect. One man’s opinion may not make a difference in the hole of things, but I feel that I may voice my opinion for nothing more than my own personal satisfaction. Hopefully, some of the more vigilent gamers will also follw suite and let their voices be heard.
August 8th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
While I’d mostly agree with your article I totally disagree with your opinion on catherine janeway, and her “scrub”ness. Since she was more compassionate than scrubby, we’re talkign about thousands of lives here, that can leave disastorous changes, not games(in the context of the show of course). Plus, she’s not so scrubby as she outsmarted and outwitted all of her enemies, by letting them think she was a scrub. She’s awesome!
August 9th, 2006 at 12:41 am
I thought I was ready to enter the larger world of more powerful, deep play. Now you’ve made me look back, and see just how small my other world was. Thank you.
August 11th, 2006 at 8:37 am
Neos: You seem to have the wrong idea about this whole thing. I’m still breaking my scrub shell, but I feel that I’ve stepped firmly enough into the world of playing to win to handle what you have to say. And I will do so with the utmost respect, without calling you an idiot. Surely, you just need a hand to open the door and help you see what is meant.
Firstly, if you haven’t already, read the rest of the articles on ‘Playing to Win’. One cannot judge a painting based on one corner of the canvas.
The point of a game is for entertainment, as has probably been stated by a lot of people on here. You get your entertainment out of hitting buttons and watching the on-screen sprites/polygons move around and hit each other. That’s fine. I get my entertainment out of picking a character from that lineup, learning them in and out, and knowing exactly what their strengths are. I get my enjoyment out of going to a place where I can find others like me, others who appreciate the game enough to learn it in and out, and make a good, competitive showing. And while the point of a game is for entertainment, if someone wasn’t intended to win, there wouldn’t be a way to do so. We’d have ridiculous games that never end. You want a game that you can’t truly ‘win’ at? Play WoW or something where there’s no real end to the game yet.
The expert player (In my experience, anyway) is bound by no rules other than those established by those who are in charge of the event they happen to be playing at, assuming it’s a tournament. If not a tourney setting, they are bound by nothing other than what the game will allow them to do. Taking into account my current game, Soulcalibur 3, the game does not allow me, as Raphael, to throw you while you’re on the ground. So I don’t try. But it does allow me to G22 (a glitch, or ‘undocumented feature’) out of Guard Impact recovery, and use a throw, or ‘Death Fist’ against you, leading into a lot of ground damage (assuming, of course, my execution is correct). Whether or not the designers intended it is irrelevant - it is there, it is known, and it should be used. Would you try to build a house without using every tool you had at your disposal, if you felt you needed all of them? I doubt it. This is the same principle. I want to win. So I will use everything I can to do so. Even things scrubs call ‘cheap’. Their words do not change my way, much in the same as mine do not change theirs.
Your commentary about how expert players relentlessly bash on scrubs shows your ignorance. Many of us (at least, many of the ones I know of) do not. Instead, many of us hold back where we can, and try to help the scrub move beyond their self-imposed rules and boundaries, and learn how to win. I, for one, get no joy out of relentlessly wailing on my friends who do not know the game as well as I do (even though now, many do). If others do, well, don’t play with them. Find someone more patient who will slow down and help you. If you have a friend that is ‘expert level’, ask them for help. Failing that, take a slow moment at the arcade or at home and tinker with the game. Figure things out. If there’s a good player at the machine, and he’s going through Arcade mode because his opponents have lost interest (this happens), ask him for a pointer. Most times, you’ll get one. We, for the most part, want to see more and better competition, because without ‘fresh blood’, the pool of skill eventually reaches a peak and stagnates.
No, winning isn’t EVERYTHING. But it’s something, and it’s something awesome. And it’s certainly better than whining because someone handed you your hat after slapping it off your head. If you’re tired of expert players humiliating you, learn how to beat them. Your own words label you a scrub, but if the desire to improve, the will to work, and the determination to stick with it are there, you can overcome and become an ‘expert’. It’s not about knowing the game in and out; it’s not about knowing the four broken characters and their three broken setups each (though this does help if such characters and setups are thrown at you). It’s about believing that you can win, not restricting yourself from it by labeling a certain character, move, or feature as ‘cheap’ or ‘unfair’. It’s about finding something that does what you like (Raphael is far from the best character in SC3 - I believe at last listing, he was middle or middle-bottom tier) and making it work so you can beat even the top-tier strategies. (I beat my friend, who plays Cassandra, a supposedly top-tier character, and plays her extremely well, on a 50% basis, steadily rising.)
Tai: For the record, Janeway was a total scrub. She had people under her charge, her responsibility, in danger of losing their lives, and she refused to put off the rules of her governing body, which was BILLIONS of miles away, to save them. She did not play to win, she did not do everything in her power to get them home. I’m not talking about blasting the hell out of some poor planet until they gave them what they needed - I’m talking about her insistence on hanging on to rules that didn’t even apply anymore. Starfleet was waaaaaay far that-a-way. She was there, and needed to get it done. She fails. She’s a scrub. Thanks. And by the way, this comes from a Star Trek fan of sorts, so you can’t just discount it as someone who doesn’t like the series.
To all: If you view my opinions as wrong, flame away. I stand by my words.
August 16th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
Nice article man!
August 17th, 2006 at 10:27 pm
Top players explore the game way more than scrubs, and even the scrub QA guy that posted here.
Top players try every character and every move extensively to find out which strategies are effective. Then they fou dcounters to those strategies, counters to those counters, and so on. While they’re doing this, they’re again checking moves and characters that seemed week at prevous levels. To players enjoy every single easpecty of the game. They play the entire game.
Scrubs play whaetever fits them. Take the QA guy, for instance. He THINKS he is exploring game, when in fact he is limiting it. The only exploiting he does is to see every single move animation. He hasa no concept of strategy, moves interactions, matchups, or any of those pro level things. He is too busy using “all moves” to undersatdn when and where those moves will counta, and all the positioning strategies devuised from a proper use of this moves.
A perfect side definiton of srubs, IMO is that “top players enjoy the entire game, and scrubs enjoy only the most superficial levels of it”.
One who plays to win plays the entire game. One who doesn’t play to win plays only a fraction of it, even when he or she thinks otherwise (and how would they know?)
If there’s a game like the one QA aguy pointed it out, where every single tourney/player can be beaten with a single 2 move strategy, then thsi game is pure and complete crap and no matter how many losing moves the designer programmed into it, they ended up doing a lousy job. It may work for teh casual gamer who busy and throws away 3 or 4 games a week though…
August 26th, 2006 at 2:32 am
I’ve read a lot of your articles and let me say that it has opened my eyes. While there are a few points that I might not agree with, I observed every point you made when I play Magic: The Gathering and it propelled me to think further about the competitive Magic Scene. Let me just say that I have learnt a lot since reading your articles and if they weren’t there, I might not have gotten 2nd at a Champs tournament. Thanks for those articles.
I play more Magic than fighting games, however.
August 26th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
A more evident example for the exsistance of scrubs might be RTS games. The classic scrubs are for example: “no-rush” or the “no-superweapon” scrub. Two very important and obvious aspects of the game, they choose to ignore due to the “cheapness.”
On the other hand, I’m sort of a scrub too. I don’t like using exploits or glitches that were not part of the game’s design. Howver if I’m exploited against. I spare no means to win the game. Even if it means I have to exploit back.
August 30th, 2006 at 7:44 am
Why do so many people misinterpret Sirlin’s thoughts?
And while I’m at it, I’d like to mention that there are not only people who shun cheap tactics, there are those who only use cheap tactics and think that they’re good. No, I’m not talking about pro-level players who uses what-most-people-would-think-as-cheap tactics, I’m talking about random more-or-less begginer players who see or find what they think is a great strategy beacause it gives them a couple of wins against random people over the internet.
For example, a couple of months ago, I joined a Starcraft melee game (1v1 Fastest Map Possible) against a random player. I was Zerg, he was Terran. Since I suck horribly at micro-management and RTSes in general, I just started making more drones. 5 minutes or so in the game, I saw his SCV apparently rushing towards me. Since he only had 5 SCVs and I had around 15 drones, I disposed of them pretty quickly. Then he left. I went to his base to see how he was, and he only had one single SCV left. I’m guessing he saw this video (http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-6648934043675888354&q=SCV+rush) or something…
Then there’s also the usual “new player who find the 2 hit jump roundhouse, crouch roundhouse and uses only this for two weeks” tactic. Gawd that’s been used way too often…
This has nothing to do with the article; I just felt like adding this for more-or-less no reason.
But I still insist on asking “Why do so many people misinterpret Sirlin?”.
August 31st, 2006 at 6:17 pm
… because he’s full of sh*t and writes like a child?
This article is a piece of crap. It says “cheapness is wanting people not to (ab)use bugs/features found in a game”. Then later it says “even cool people like me draw a line somewhere and don’t allow uber-exploits”. Duh. So “playing to win” is all about sharing his exact view on where to draw the line. Draw it any earlier, and you’re a scrub. Draw it any later, and … well, he doesn’t name that crowd.
If you’re playing for fun, you agree whatever rules and prohibitions you want in the group. Who cares if anyone else thinks you’re a bunch of scrubs.
If you’re playing in a competition, you abide by the rules set by the organisers of the competition. It’s a no-brainer - you don’t set them, so it doesn’t matter whether they’re “scrubby” rules or not.
This whole philosophy would fit on a postage stamp. This entire page is a lamentable waste of bandwidth.
September 1st, 2006 at 2:50 am
Normally, I wouldn’t reply to this, but since I wrote a comment that’s longer than 3 lines, and that you’re partly replying to me, I feel obliged to reply to you.
The whole article (imo, I don’t know for sure if this was what Sirlin wanted to say) is a discussion of the rules. Without rules, there’s chaos, and people would be allowed to do thing that you normally wouldn’t ever do, like stab the other player’s arm in the finals so he couldn’t play anymore (though it is a bit extreme and probably illegal too). There HAS to be a bar set so that a tournament can be playable, let alone fair.
For the rules to be set, the community needs to find out what makes it fair to all players to have an even chance. Usually, the game is balanced enough for the rules to be “Do anything in game to win”, but for some cases, the rules need to be adjusted to fix a broken part of a game, like Akuma in Super Turbo. Those particular broken parts can change the game incredibly, from being a mind boggling intense fight to air fireball festivals. Most people consider these problems too extreme, so they change the rules to fit the game properly, and make the game fair and balanced again. That is why tournament rules are generally considered to be the better “version” of the game, since it fixes problems, makes the game more balanced, and it is the community itself that made the changes in the first place.
Then there are people who take the rule-making idea too far, thinking things from infinites to fireballs and throws are too make the game too unbalanced, and so they call “cheap”. The problem with this is that it is only their and a minority’s opinion, beacause most people consider these fair game and that the player can and should either use it or counter it.
This feels like I described the article backwards Oo;;
September 4th, 2006 at 7:13 am
i play gunz alot and there are alot of scrubs in that that says spraying is cheap and i will be banned just for using this tactic. i even tried to bfly but im not that good at it so i spray tatic.
September 4th, 2006 at 8:59 am
Hello. I’ve read this article a while ago (and some other ones here), and they’re pretty interesting. (Unfortunately, I have only read about the first 60 replies here, so if my points are already addressed, please point me to which ones address them). I guess from this article that I go under the definition of “scrub.” I will admit that I’m just a “casual gamer.” But I had some thoughts about the whole thing.
First, why play to win? I understand that that is what makes somebody improve. I myself have enjoyed going to academic competitions a few times (particularly in math and computer science). I was even surprised when I found out just how competitive things can get at a high level. For me, however, I think that if one takes something too seriously, and acts as if his life depends on it, that’s going too far. I watched a documentary about how high school baseball is serious in Japan, where teams hope to go to Koshien… that was surprising, too… in any case, doesn’t common sense say that only a few people can be the best? Surely, not being the best doesn’t ncessarily say something bad about someone. From my math competitions, I decided to play for fun (and thus not train for them) because I didn’t see them as so important. Same thing with video games… they were created for fun. If people like to compete as well as they do, there’s nothing wrong with that, but I don’t see why casual players have to be insulted here.
Now, for cheapness, I’ll admit that in all my game playing, I must have used that word too many times. Still, I think certain things can be cheap, depending on the game. For me, it means some action in a game that a player can do nothing about once it starts, or is unreasonably hard to avoid. Many “tactics” seem to have what Sirlin calls a slippery slope. Is it simply that there are ways to prevent being attacked with these tactics? Also, why are certain actions skilled if they are repetitive in some way? I prefer matches with variety, and I don’t have fun if someone can simply kill me in a game the same way over and over. I would understand the need for “cheapness” in a war, because something like that is truly a situation where you must win at all costs. (Of course, there are certain rules of war people have agreed to, though that concept doesn’t make much sense to me, especially since they are always broken.) But as I said before, I don’t think games are that important.
If anyone could answer my questions and thoughts, I’d appreciate it.
September 4th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
I’ll answer, since I pretty much have too much free time now.
Since you seem to have 2-3 huge paragraphs stuck together, I’m presuming you have 2-3 questions.
First: Why play to win?
If the advancement of oneself and rewards like money prizes are not enough, then what about the pure thrill of high-level competitive play? One thing that people never notice is that competitive play is simply exiting and fun, no matter how serious you’re actually playing.
I’m frankly not sure what you’re second question is, but I’m guessing it’s something around this:
Why do people use the same, repetitive tactics to win? It’s boring being beaten by the same thing over and over again. I want some variety!
Might be beacause it works? 99% of tactics are beatable/counterable/flawed in some way. You just have to search it out, even if you have to play 100 matches where your oppenent keeps doing that annoying infinite that you can’t seem to stop, you might find a way out.
And many people consider video games AS war, except the battlefield is limited to the game itself and the losses are usually a lot less valuable.
Erm…hope I helped?
September 4th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
When people say video games as “just a game, get a life,” they’re overlooking the part where, say, Olympic swimmers or NCAA tennis players are also playing “just a game.” If you want to be a gamer couch potato, that’s your choice, and I don’t think Sirlin will judge you the way others will. But if you want to improve yourself, video games are just as good as any other competition that develops the skills you need to succeed at anything. I don’t play many video games, but Sirlin’s book showed me why I should respect competitive gamers as much as I would respect physical athletes, or anyone else who knows what it takes to be the best. The preparation and mindset he described reminded me of what it was like to get through law school and study for the bar exam. And “cheap” is something I would never think to call opposing counsel for using an uncounterable legal strategy, even if it means I lose. If I had the attitude of some of the noobs here, I would just give up every time opposing counsel threw me a challenge, call counsel dirty names, and try to make myself feel better about having more honor than the guy who just beat me and cost my client millions of dollars. In real life, that’s unacceptable, and the sooner you learn how to respond to “cheap” tactics, the better off you’ll be when you take stuff you learned from playing “just a game” and apply it to the rest of your life.
September 7th, 2006 at 12:52 am
I disagree with the article. It is well written and I can see how many, or even most might agree, but I don’t. One can still play honorably, one can still also refrain from playing “cheaply,” and can still be good, or even a top player.
This writer categorizes the people that disagree with him and his version of what playing to win is as basically a bunch of wandering “circus” fools that “ignorantly” mash “buttons with little regard to actual strategy.” This is not true at all. The notion that one must shed the honorable ways of old in order to become a top player is also rediculous.
It is very possible to fight honorably and not use cheap crap and be among the best. In my opinion, it’s more fun that way. It’s more difficult…more of a challenge.
As the writer also pointed out, these people that “play to win” also often exploit bugs. From my own experience encountering them and by their own admission they not only do this, but are also often cheaters who will basically do anything to win. That’s all the game is about to them. That kind of play style just doesn’t hold great appeal for me.
It also saddens me that so many feel they have to do what this writer calls “playing to win” to be good, because they don’t. Having experience playing both ways, i’ll say that it is almost always, at least me anyway, a greater challenge and more fun playing the “honorable” way. You can still get better. You can still improve yourself playing “honorably.” I’m sure it’s not like this in every game…where you can play “honorably” and not use “cheap” crap and still be good or amongst the best. But it is in the games I play. I think it will be in DarkFall too. And as long as it is possible to “be among the