Playing to Win, Part 2: Mailbag
Rebuttals and Clarifications
My original "Playing to Win" article generated an incredible amount of e-mail, mostly of the form:
"Dear Sirlin,
I thoroughly enjoyed your Play to Win article. It has changed the way I think about games. [Or, I always believed the same things about games but you put them into words for me.] What you described about Street Fighter is exactly the same for [game X] that I play."
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This man just read Playing to Win, Part 1. |
"Game X" took the form of Counter-strike, Virtua Fighter, Magic: the Gathering, Legend of the 5 Rings, Starcraft, Smash Brothers, Scrabble, Tiddlywinks, and many others. It's sort of like when a supreme being speaks and each listener believes the words were spoken directly to him in his native language. Ok, it's not exactly like that, but I had you going there. Seriously though, communities surrounding all sorts of competitive games do face the exact same issues.
Now that the overtly self-congratulatory portion of the article is over, let's move on to those who had disagreements and questions about "Playing to Win."
The Objections
There were some who objected to the entire notion of playing to win. Here are representative samples of their views:
"But I really have a tactic that wins every time! Tower rushing in Warcraft 3 [or camping in Unreal Tournament, or whatever else]. It's not that I'm a scrub, but the game is more fun when I don't use that tactic and when I play against others who also don't use it."
Bad news for you. You are a scrub. You can't e-mail me and claim not to be a scrub, yet exemplify the only pre-requisite! (Well you can, but please don't.) What's worse is that the tactics stated are always tactics I know for a fact not to be "too good." Does tower rushing win every Warcraft 3 tournament? No. Are all the best Unreal Tournament players hardcore campers (players who sit in one spot on the map)? No. Then what are you complaining about? Learn the counter to the strategy. If there is no counter (there is a 99.9% that there is, but you don't know about it), then enter some tournaments, win them all and prove it. If you manage to do that, then fine, you've exposed the game as a degenerate one that you should probably no longer play. Otherwise, expand your horizons and learn more about the game. I suppose you could continue to play your homemade version of the game against other scrubs, but I think you'd be missing out.
"What about using the map hack in Starcraft, or a packet interceptor, or a macro to cast your spells faster, or a server that enforces no camping in a first person shooter, or just a swift kick to the shins of your opponent?"
First let's address the smarty-pants questions, then get to the heart of the issue. One of the great things about playing to win is that it's a path of self-improvement that can be measured. Becoming a better cook is also path of self-improvement, but it's more subjective and much more difficult to measure. In playing to win, we have the cold, hard results of winning and losing to guide us. I think it's only useful to consider winning and losing in the context of formal competition, such as tournaments. Kicking your opponents in the shins is outside the scope of the game, and is not legal in any reasonable tournament.
Likewise, any 3rd party program obtained from an illegal warez site and installed as a hack into your game is also not going to be legal in any reasonable tournament. These things, though technically useful to those trying to win, are outside the path of continuous self-improvement that I'm talking about. You should use any *tournament legal* means to win. If you participate in some strange tournament where all players are allowed to use a map hack, then go for it. You're playing a rather weird, non-standard version of the game, though, which defeats the whole purpose of shedding extra rules so as to play the same game as everyone else. Any reasonable person would consider "no cheating from outside the game" to be part of the default rule-set of any game.
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| Things outside the scope of the game are usually banned. Leave your narcotic analgesics at home, kids. |
The case of a server that monitors camping (sitting in one place too long) in a first person shooter, is a little more interesting. It meets the very important criteria for a ban of strict enforceability (players need no friendly agreement; the server knows exactly who breaks the rule and hands out a penalty). I think it fails on two other counts, though.
1) The tactic of camping is almost certainly not a game-breaking tactic, so it has no place being banned in the first place.
2) If it were a game-breaking tactic, it's just too hard to fairly monitor. If camping is defined as staying within one zone for 3 minutes, and if it really is the best tactic, then sitting that zone for 2 minutes 59 seconds becomes the best tactic.
A ban must be enforceable, warranted, and concrete (or discrete). The last requirement is really just part of the first, I suppose. Imagine that repeating a certain sequence of 5 moves over and over is the best tactic in a game. Further suppose that doing so is "taboo" and that players want to ban it. There is no concrete definition of exactly what must be banned. Can players do 3 repetitions of the 5 moves? What about 2 reps? What about 1? What about repeating the first 4 moves and omitting the 5th? Is that ok? The game becomes a test of who is willing to play as close as possible to the "taboo tactic" without breaking the (arbitrary) letter of the law defining the tactic.
Some games have it easier than others when it comes to banning. In the card game Magic: the Gathering, it's easy to create an enforceable, discrete ban. "Card X is now illegal. If you have card X in your deck, you are disqualified." The tough part there is whether the ban is actually warranted.
Street Fighter Again!
Speaking of banning, forgive my tangent into the world of Street Fighter. In the 10 year history of the 30 different versions of the game, there has only been one banning issue which had any serious debate: the issue of "roll canceling" in Capcom vs. SNK 2 (CvS2). So-called "roll canceling"is a bug-exploit that allows a player to cancel a ground roll within the first 5/60ths of a second into any special or super move, retaining the invulnerability of roll during the special or super. Let's try that again. Roll canceling is a bug requiring difficult timing that allows a player to have many invulnerable moves that the game designers never intended.
Some people claimed that players would never master roll canceling. That was just foolish, so I'll pretend I never heard that. Players will master anything that will help them win. Some players claimed that if you can beat person A, but not person B, and both A and B learn to roll cancel, that you will still beat A but not B. Others believed that even if the game ended up being all about roll canceling vs. roll canceling, that there would still be a game. Others, including myself, believed that roll canceling would ruin the game, making it degenerately unplayable. The actual results are amusing.
August 9-11, 2002, we held the largest fighting game tournament ever in the United States. 20 players from Japan attended and CvS2 was one of the 3 primary tournament games. Most American players did not learn to roll cancel (including myself, I did not take the game seriously). Most Japanese players did. The 7th and 8th place finishers were from the US; the top 6 finishers were all Japanese. The player who won the tournament, Tokido of Japan, played Blanka and Honda(!?), using nothing but roll cancelled invulnerable versions of their self-projectile moves. This tactic absolutely destroyed the #1 US player (who even used roll canceling himself!), and the other Japanese finalist, who was clearly the better player. The "better player" just never got a chance to actually do anything during entire the set of games since the roll cancelled Blanka ball seemed unbeatable.
Should roll canceling be banned? I'm pretty sure it meets the standard of "warranted" since I'm satisfied that under serious tournament conditions, the game completely fell apart into a joke. Unfortunately, the ban would be practically unenforceable, since roll cancelled moves are exceedingly hard to actually detect or prove. I should note that many top players of the game believe that the tactic creates a different, but non-degenerate game, so it should not be banned. Ha!
Whew, we made it through more Street Fighter mumbo-jumbo. Back to the complaints!
"But playing hard against beginners (or my girlfriend) is mean. I play down to their level so it will be close."
This one is tough. Many people presented elaborate situations which were basically equivalent to them being stuck on a desert island with only one video game and one opponent who is doomed never to improve and claimed that it is more fun not to play to win since it would always be a blowout. In such a case, I suppose I concede the point.
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| Apparently, several of my readers are in this situation. |
But what about a case where you have ready access to a variety of opponents? I'll present the case of legendary Street Fighter player Thomas Osaki (darn, back to that game again). I did not actually play with Thomas during his heyday, but I have since met him and I hope he forgives any misrepresentation of his conduct during his glory years.
Thomas Osaki dominated the game of Street Fighter in Northern California. His reputation for "playing to win" was quite extreme. They say he never really engaged in "casual play," but rather always played his hardest, as if every game had something on the line or was a serious tournament. They say he played this way regardless of his opponent, even if his opponent was a 9 year-old girl with no skill at the game. He would "stutter step, throw" her like all the rest (a particularly "cheap" tactic). Did he have no compassion at all? Was he just a jerk? I like to think of Thomas (or his legend, in case it happens not to be true) not as mean player, but as an inspiring player. He set a bar of excellence. In his path of self-improvement, he was not willing to compromise, to embrace mediocrity, or to give less than his all at any time. His peers had the extraordinary opportunity to experience brilliant play whenever he was near, not just at rare moments in a tournament.
And what of the 9 year-old girl? Perhaps she had no business playing in the first place. From Thomas's view, getting her off the machine allowed him to face the opponents he "should" be facing anyway.
*pause for hate-mail*
Because I'm psychic, I can tell that you violently object to the above, and that you have three specific grievances:
1) "I can't play that way, because if I did, and even if I believed it was the best path to self-improvement, I DON'T have a steady stream of opponents in the game I play. I have a limited audience and playing that way, or playing to win at all, alienates them so I am forced to tone it down."
2) "If everyone played that way, no one would ever be able to learn the game."
3) "There are better things in life than winning. You are just a rude bully."
On the fist point--yeah. You got me. If playing your hardest prevents your opponents from playing you, and you have access to only a very few opponents, I guess you're stuck. Sorry. Too bad you don't play Warcraft 3 or some internet game with endless opponents. You will be unable to improve past a certain point, so make the best of it, find more opponents, or play a different game.
On the second point, I guess you got me again. You, the expert player, are powerful in the narrow domain of whichever game you play. How will you use that power? Perhaps you will judge who is worthy to be taught the secret knowledge and who is to be dispatched quickly. Perhaps you will take one of the two extremes, and either defeat all or nurture all. No matter what you do, I am strongly in favor of you passing on your wisdom and passion to other players. It's no "fun" being good at an esoteric game with no players, so it is even to your advantage to train and mentor new players. But beware--all training and no "real playing" can weaken you. Thomas "trained" his peers by exemplifying excellence, setting an inspiring standard. But what is the "moral" thing to do? Does morality matter in this context?
This whole area is far beyond the scope of my ability to advise. It all comes down to what your goal really is. To improve yourself? To improve others? To win? To have "fun"?
We need to take about 100 steps back and remember what the whole point of "playing to win" was in the first place. It's certainly not about beating 9 year-old girls at Street Fighter.
The Whole Point
Imagine a majestic mountain nirvana of gaming. At its peak are fulfillment, "fun", and even transcendence. Most people could care less about this mountain peak, because they have other life issues that are more important to them, and other peaks to pursue. There are few, though, who are not at this peak, but who would be very happy there. These are the people I'm talking to. Some of them don't need any help; they're on the journey. Most, though, only believe they are on that journey but actually are not. They got stuck in a chasm at the mountain's base, a land of scrubdom. Here they are imprisoned in their own mental constructs of made up game rules. If they could only cross this chasm, they would discover either a very boring plateau (for a degenerate game) or the heavenly enchanted mountain peak (for a "deep" game). In the former case, crossing the chasm would teach them to find a different mountain with more fulfilling rewards. In the latter case, well, they'd just be happier. All "playing to win" was supposed to be is the process of shedding the mental constructs that trap players in the chasm who would be happier at the mountain peak.
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You could be up there. I don't think there's any internet connections up there, though. |
This brings us to point 3 from way back ("there are more things to life than winning"). A lot of people get rubbed the wrong way by this stuff because they think I want to apply "playing to win" to everyone. I don't. It's not that I think everyone should or would want to be on that peak. There are other peaks in life, probably better ones. But those who are stuck in the chasm really should know their positions and how to reach a happier place.
Thanks for all the responses.
--Sirlin
May 4th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
I belive that your way to see live is quite outstanding for most people. You should remember a few things:
1.- Success is for those ones who really wish to win. Others won’t even care to read the real concept you try to explain. the only thing they will understand is that you call them useless. Any way, it’s just the truth, but a painfull truth for those who are not able to accept theyr low level in most games.
2.- There are 2 kind of players for any kind of game: The ones who play to win, tobe the best, to improve themselves. And those who play to enjoy a time with theyr friends, girlfriends or just to spend some time.
3.- Who can say what is right and what is wrong about a specific criteria? Only top players can determine with real arguee about how and when to exclude a move, character, strat, card, or whatever makes the game extremely imba, so that the game reduces to that single event. That is a good reason of why most scrubs keep oposing to the “winners rules”.
However, i like to play to win, of course, it makes me feel good as i win or loose while giving my whole in the game. Of course, actual world popullation is more like avoiding the effort and even so getting the limitis on theyr hability leveles so they can have a slice of the pie =/.
It’s a good article, thx.
May 6th, 2006 at 2:29 am
I would like to point out a very interesting example.
In Guild Wars (GW), a competitive online RPG (the kind with world championships, a deep PvP side, and focusing on balance. The form of gameplay, is that you can, as a player, select 8 skills from 2 professions. Each (core) professions has 100 skills to choose from. So you have 200 skills at your disposal. Additionally, you can set attribute points, which increases the effect of your skills. Then you group up with 7 other people, and you have a team.), there is a team build (ie, “tactic”) called IWAY, from the skill “I Will Avenge You!”.
This skill, used by warriors, basically makes you attack 25% faster, and gain +6 (out of 10) health regeneration for 10 seconds per dead ally. This skill costs 5 energy to activate (out of a maximum of 26 for most warriors) and can be used every 45 seconds.
In GW, rangers also have the ability to have a pet (this takes up a skill slot). A pet is counted as an ally. So IWAY is also triggered by dead pets.
The tactic involved uses 4 IWAY warriors, using hard-hitting attack skills, snares (skills to slow down you opponent, making him/her easier to hit), IWAY, a ressurection skill, and a pet.
Additionally, you have 2 rangers, each with a pet. One for removal of hexes and conditions (debuffs) and trapping (causing conditions and damage) and another for trapping.
And lastly, 2 necromancers. A tainted necro, to remove buffs from your target and cause a mass AoE condition, a spreading disease, and an order necro, to buff the warriors with a buff to make them cause extra damage, and to heal.
In battle, the warriors and rangers send in their pets, and make them fight till they drop. Then they run in, activating IWAY on the way (which gives them 60 seconds of regen due to 6 dead pets), and spam attack skills and trap.
This is a relatively easy build to play, and can indeed kill many teams, but many sees this tactic as “cheap”. However, this is where the interesting part comes.
In the very heavily balanced meta-game of GW, there is no invincible builds! There is always a counter. And in the case of IWAY, I can think of at least a dozen of ways to completely devastate any IWAY team. As long as your team is skilled, and uses a decent build, IWAY is no problemo. IWAY is merely an easy way to gain fame (PvP rank), by exploiting the unknowingness of some teams.
So while IWAY may be easy to win with, and only requires skills on the part of the necromancers, it is far from cheap. Yet, people refuse to accept this build.
However, here comes my question. Would they be scrubs or not, people refusing to play IWAY? Most of them refuse to play IWAY, simply because it is not the best. The highest ranked guild I have heard of playing IWAY, was rank #50. Requirement for joining the World Championship is to be in the top 10. IWAY simply not the singlemost effective build.
And in the world championship finals, where the finalist was 2 teams of 8 very serious Koreans, who definately played to win, IWAY was nowhere to be seen. One used a split build, another a balanced (will not go into what there implies).
Yes, very good article, and I would be interested in hearing your reply to this.
_Zexion
May 6th, 2006 at 10:59 am
If IWAY is most effective against bad players, and no guild that uses IWAY is in the top 50, then why would you fault someone for not playing it? Wouldn’t it be smart to pick a build that is good at high levels? I don’t understand why anyone is being called a scrub here.
Even if IWAY *is* the best, it’s not even necessarily “scrubby” to avoid playing it. You might choose to metagame against it, or there might be some other strategy that you are personally good at executing. I know in fighting games, that sometimes a certain character or strategy just “clicks” with someone, and they are better off goind with that than playing another theoretically better character/build.
–Sirlin
June 5th, 2006 at 2:41 am
Ok, here’s an interesting one for you. In the N64 wrestling game WCW vs. NWO Revenge when you get pinned by an opponent if you move the right analog stick you will cancel your opponent’s pin, effectively making you unpinnable. In a match where you’ve got submissions and KOs allowed it’s not too terrible because you’ve got alternate means of winning the match, but in a pin-only match there’s absolutely no way to successfully pin someone who uses this tactic. Since you just move the right analog stick while you’re being pinned, it’s insanely easy to do (and thus fairly common knowledge). In my opinion, this is one of those few tactics that are truly “cheap”, since it effectively locks pin-only matches into a stalemate. In standard matches with alternate means of winning, it annoys me still, not because it impairs my chances of winning but it kind of kills off one of the key elements that make the match fun (for me at least). I mean, if you wanted a “no pin” match, there are options to turn pins off. What do you think?
June 5th, 2006 at 4:26 am
I know you were not talking to me, but I would say that obviously its the game’s stupid fault for including it, but it would be a reasonably easy thing to moniter in competive play, and has clear cut bannability.
June 5th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Yeah, I never understood why they put that “cheat” in there. The worst part is that it’s not a glitch, it works in WWF Wrestlemania 2000 and WWF No Mercy as well. I’m sure it would be a pretty easy thing to monitor in a competition (since other people are judging things) but when playing with your friends it sucks because you never really know if they kicked out because their character still had the stamina for it or if they did a split second right analog flick. I think THQ/AKI were on crack when they made that cheat… LoL
June 5th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
Agreed. Its such a dumb feature. You just have to have honorable friends that you can trust. Unfortunatly, some of my friends are too immature/insecure to accept a loss when they could just cheat their way out.
June 22nd, 2006 at 1:44 am
I personally think that, with the exception of Rainenkaji, no tacts have a right to be banned… nor most other things. Yes, people will play the “cheapest” they can to win… no harm no foul… if they can, so can you, until someone comes up with something else… Cinder players in KI, Motaro players in MKU, and the like… they all know that being cheap wins…
Honestly? get better… Skill>Tiers… when my Bowser can annihilate my friend’s marth (SSBM), I can honestly say that… Also, as was said, some players enjoy some characters, and GGX is a good show of that…
I still want balance… GG and SSB to the end!
June 29th, 2006 at 7:37 am
Very weak article compared to the first. I think you went off on too much of a tangent here. If people can’t work out the morality of things, or what they want to do or achieve, they are in a lot of trouble and asking you these questions is a sign of how lemming like they are.
August 22nd, 2006 at 9:51 am
Some games are just broken. It isn’t “cheap” to be able to flick the right analog stick, it’s broken. It isn’t a cheat, it is a failure in design. Ofcourse, I haven’t actually played the game so I can’t really say if it is a broken design or just a property of the game that people don’t like, which isn’t the same thing. But I trust you guys enough to say that it’s probably just broken. Play without it, play with it, or don’t play it at all.
September 25th, 2006 at 12:52 am
Oh Sirlin the scrubs are those who lose to iway and complain about it to the point they want it nerfed. What Zexion was trying to point out is that if iway was soo effective according to scrub brain then why don’t the scrubs play iway? Thus they are called scrubs by the better portion of Guild Wars pvp community since they complain about a easy build that anyone can play but refused to play it even though they insist on calling it overpowered.
December 12th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
I agree with the playing to win mind set. I am able to pick up games and become good very quickly so I end up playing to win no matter what. A problem I find in this is the lack of skilled opponents to face.(even some online games lack skilled opponents) I figure that I’m the lucky one being that I have a friend who has made an interesting comparison between us (from the anime Naruto), I’m like Neji a naturally gifted genius who doesn’t have to work hard at becoming incredibly skilled (I’ve literally become better at some games over night), while he is Rock Lee, someone who has little natural talent but is willing to put in the extra hours and effort to make up for it.
Without him around I’m posotive that I wouldn’t be able to keep this play-to-win mentallity up, which would decrease my interest in many kinds of games. If you don’t have a worthy opponent create/train one! I’ve trained several friends from never having heard of the game to almost my equal. It takes time and commitment from both parties but it’s worth it in the end when both of you are playing to win.
By the way, is there anywhere I can pick up Sirlins book? I would like to get a copy of it but I’m too lazy to order it online. Maybe I’ll go look at some local bookstores or something.
January 8th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
I need to know what you think about using Handicaps in games to even up things. When playing with my friend in Super Smash bros melee I`m forced to either tone down or have a high (or low, I forget now) handicap.
Is using a handicap and giving your all still playing to win… or is it scrubdom.
February 21st, 2007 at 2:17 pm
I think that handicap is perfect (depending on how it is implemented). It is an in-game mechanism, and allows you to play to your highest level while still giving your unskilled opponent a “fighting chance”. It is likely that playing with a handicap will allow you to learn more from an opponent that you are much better than than playing regularly, as you will have to use all of your tricks instead of just practicing your basics one more time. My group uses handicaps extensively for smash brothers matches, and I can tell you that I would not be as devastatingly proficient with sleep as I am without it.
February 28th, 2007 at 9:32 am
My experience lies only in Naruto 4, since it’s the first competitive game I picked up, but I wanted to leave scrubdom. For a while I would play one character to learn him, and eventually started toppling all those who played except 2nd and 3rd in state. Granted, I win on occasion, but the matches between us are few and far between compared to the normal group I play with. Because I didn’t want to alienate people I started using characters I don’t normally use. Granted, I still played those characters with the intent to beat my opponent silly, but would you consider it scrubby of me to even change out of my usual list?
In preparation for tournament this coming weekend, I’ve actually shed my entire character list to move up to Top Tier characters. My original cast included a low tier as my best character, and two high-mid tiers as my second and third best. I still don’t know the characters as well as my old list, but are statistically better. Plus, because of the huge rise in abilities of the characters I still do just as well, and possibly even better. I’ve even got down moves that do 100% damage as well as practicing another technique which is unblockable. When I play these characters, I play with the intent of taking down anyone I’m going against and have absolutely no problem applying such tactics against beginners. This once again begs the question if reserving my best characters for the top players is scrubby? Cause I’d like to think I’ve moved past that, considering in a casual I had no problem applying a constant unblockable move against a newbie because I didn’t want to pass the stick.
February 28th, 2007 at 9:41 am
I also forgot to mention I was using said move because 1) I didn’t really know how to play the character I was using and 2) It was a terrible match-up and I’d have lost to a massive pressure game and speed my character couldn’t even handle. I left out the most critical point I wanted to ask: Using the same move over and over, even I believed it to be cheap to use it over and over like that against someone who didn’t really know the game too well (even though I knew the counter to it). However, does my thinking like that still leave me as scrub, or is the fact that even with that mindset I still used it anyway leave me in a gray area instead?
May 8th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Ok, how about this scenario.
In football(soccer for you americans), there are a few unwritten rules which are looked upon almost as official rules, despite their not being in the rulebook itself.
For example, if a player gets injured and his team has possession of the ball, they will kick it out of play for a throw in so that he can get treatment, because the referee cannot stop the game just for this reason.(in the case of a head inury he can, but otherwise not). This is all well and good.
However, if the player is injured and the opposing team has the ball, they are not obliged, but are fully expected (by everyone involved in the game- fans, the coach, other players etc) to also kick the ball out for a throw so the ijured player can get treatment. Once this is done, the ball is returned to the team which had possession, usually by returning it to their goalkeeper.
Considering this second situation, there are ways that the team who has possession (teamP) can cynically use it to their advantage, and also ways in which the team who don’t have possession (teamI)-whose player is injured- can cynically use this situation to their advantage.
TeamP can do 2 things. One is done fairly regualrly, and the other i have only seen once ever, and i remember it because it happened against the team i support!
The first thing they can do is ignore the injured player and play on- ie attack, press forward, try to score etc. Remember they are not obliged by the rules to put the ball out of play. The fans of teamI will at this point start to whistle and boo against the ‘bad sportsmanship’ shown by teamP, and if teamP score (bearing in mind they have a man advantage) then usually the fans, coach pundits etc will be up in arms about the event, and it will become a major talking point.
ll this time the injured player will presumably be rolling around on the floor, and one reason teamP might carry on is because they think the injured player is ‘playacting’(which i will come to later)
The second thing they can do is the ‘honorable’ thing, and put the ball out of play, having it returned to them after.
The third thing(which is the event i have only seen once, and therefore i shall describe this to you through that incident) is this. TeamP put the ball out of play and the injured player is treated. All of teamP’s players advance upfield in the expectation of teamI’s return of the ball to their goalkeeper, who will restart with a long kick upfield. The teamI player who is taking the throw throws it back to the ‘keeper, but before he can get to it a player from teamI runs downfield, takes the ball and scores, as teamP’s defence is all upfield waiting for the goalkick.
This event caused so much uproar that the manager of teamI offered to replay the match(which actually happened), because he accepted that this was completely unsportsmanlike conduct (when they interviewed the teamI player who scored, it turned out he was foreign(from africa, which has a different football culture to europe) and this kind of practice would not be frowned upon there.
The final thing i promised i’d get to is the issue of playacting. This whole situation is now being turned on its head, so that if teamI loses the ball and teamP sprints upfield, & are looking like scoring, a player from teamI will deliberately pretend to be injured so that teamP puts the ball out and lose their attacking advantage.
It has got to the point now that the game states that teamP does not have to put the ball out unless the referee says so, deliberately to stop the kind of behaviour immediately above.
So teamI is acting completely within the rules by pretending to be injured(as there’s no way of telling for sure) or not returning the throw and using it to catch teamP off guard, yet there’s no way that the 2nd option would happen, simply because of the disgrace which would be placed upon the club and players afterwards. And teamP are acting within the rules by ignoring the injured player if they think he is playacting(sometimes he is, sometimes not, sometimes he really is injured but does a bit of acting on top)
By your definition, however, all the people(pretty much everyone in the football world) who would complain about this practice(im speaking about throwing the ball back here, playacting and the subsequent ignoring of it are fairly commonplace) are ’scrubs’ because of this. I would not equate this ’scrubbishness’ with the types described in your article, but there is no solid reason i can give for this opinion other than the extent to which this sense of ’sporting-ness’ is so deeply ingrained in football, to the point where it cannot be broken.
sorry to be so long winded, i tried to explain it as clearly as possible, i wonder if you have any thoughts on this matter.
July 22nd, 2007 at 4:24 pm
There is no “defualt rule set” if your playing to win.
I guess the flaw in your argument that playing to win, is ok, however playing to win by cheating is not.
But if you dont cheat, in my opinion, your not really playing at all.
In the end, everyone is a scrub, there is nothing else.
July 31st, 2007 at 12:08 pm
“But if you dont cheat, in my opinion, your not really playing at all.”
In your opinion? I suggest getting out of that opinion. That way, you’ll make more sense to others and will get punched in the face much less often.
November 10th, 2007 at 12:44 am
Well, I feel the need to comment on this really old article ’cause I was that 9 year old girl. Back in the day my brother [about seven years my senior] was the local champ of the MvsC2 tournaments and he would always sort of play around when I got up on the controls (and by play around, I mean make it apparent that he wasn’t trying very hard to decimate my team, but it was alot of fun because he’d make jokes and say things so dying was a very entertaining experience…) and I’d be all *uber super button mash of Doom… oh darn…* Always stuck with Felicia, even when people got out flying guys who do well against her and BB Hood, even though she’s low tier…
But fast forward a few years and my dad takes me to the arcade for a bit and I’m short and female and look like I have no idea what I’m doing so some guy comes up to challenge me. Naturally, I’m used to playing against my brother and the merciless guys from the tournament and this person is just a C level player, so me and my kitty proceed to destroy him, and after every win I would be all acting like I couldn’t believe I won and sooner or later I just started playing with him (waiting until he jumps into one of my supers and taunting randomly so he runs into Dr. Doom’s rocks or Blackheart’s ice column trying to take me off guard and stuff like that), so my dad just gives the guy quarters until he manages to pull off a win (it took awhile) and afterwards he says to me all perturbed, “Don’t you know you could’ve ruined that guy’s whole day?”
One of the tournament players came back after a long time (most of them had moved off to college and the arcade was under new management, and the new management was stupid and was in the process of selling all the good games and fighting games and filling the place with Spongebob Racing and Whack-An-Alligator and lame stuff like that) and played against me, and I didn’t remember who he was and he basically had me in several positions where I couldn’t attack him (like in the air being super-ed), but I was all over him nonetheless when I could attack. So I lost and he was all, “Hey, you must be Cliff’s sister…” Apparently, even though I lost, I played good enough for him to recognize me, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside (family honor and all that good stuff).
But all of that rambling was to say that going hard on the little girl and her losing doesn’t necessarily mean she had no business playing in the first place. Everyone has to start from somewhere, if she’s determined she’ll just get better and start embarrassing some poor boy one of these days ^ ^. At least that’s what I did… I would’ve never learned to play like that if my brother was all callous while I was on the game or if he got down to my level.
November 10th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
Okay, she won the award for best comment ever.
December 11th, 2007 at 10:24 am
All games have a set of rules under which you can take certain actions. The game is confined to that ruleset. Cheating is doing something outside of that ruleset. That is what cheating is by definition. If you are cheating, then you aren’t playing the same game, and because you aren’t playing the same game, most likely you’re a scrub because the reason people cheat in serious play is because they are insufficiently skilled to beat the better players, and thus justify violating the ruleset.
Fundamentally, removing a piece from the chessboard is not playing chess. If you don’t understand that, you understand nothing. But playing in a particular way in chess, taking allowable actions, however counterintuitive, is always legal.
Its also worth noting that real life can be seen as a game of sorts. Remember, our rules are quite loose, but while you CAN do anything, you have to understand there are consequences. The more you cheat, the closer you get to reality, where the rules are more and more set by other people, and thus ultimately you have less and less control.