I ask because I am thinking of someone who “plays to win” in another field entirely. I’m not a competitive gamer, though I find the field interesting. I was a competitive “action” shooter until money troubles made it impractical to “play to win.” (And will be again, I might add) Brian Enos, the father of modern action pistol shooting, would do goofy things that everyone considered foolish. Instead of holding the pistol the “best” way, he would arbitrarily try anything that came to mind during practice.

He, Rob Leatham, and other like thinking friends took the action pistol game by storm. They laid waste to “the way things are” and turned things upside down. I relate this because he didn’t do these things simply to enjoy shooting more, he was also playing to win.

As a side note, I find very little difference in mindset between winners in various competitions. The only biggie I’ve encountered is that sports like action shooting often benefit from a great deal of thought beforehand and no thought in the “doing.” Thinking in the middle of an IDPA or IPSC stage means you are going slow. You should already know what to do, how to do it, and how to react if you screw it up, before you step up to the line. I believe this is because the game is extremely fast and you don’t directly compete against another person. They post their time, you post yours. The opponent is distilled out of your performance; you can still lose but you don’t fight anyone directly. In video games, it’s mano e mano. Quick, creative thinking can make the difference.

After basically mastering Super Punch-Out!! for SNES, I was waltzing all over the bosses, when I decided to play berserk-style to the point of suboptimality ‘for fun’. The last boss Nick Bruiser will back up and leap on you with an auto-KO attack that breaks blocking and interrupts punches. Totally suicidal, I throw a super uppercut thinking the lag will kill me, and to my amazement the move him caught him in a vulnerable frame for an auto KO! With this new knowledge, now I can KO even the last boss out of his super in a time attack. Super easy game, but it looks cool to my friends.

The saddest part is, if more players were willing to explore new tactics, they would probably find ways to deal with things such as “camping” that are claimed to dominate games. And often… those same players who aren’t willing to put up with things like “camping” are the same ones who want to win by simply strolling around a map, running and gunning.

Of course… sometimes it is difficult to stand in the face of whatever is deemed “conventional”, especially if you’ve got a lot of players in your chosen game. Sometimes a tactic IS difficult to counter, and must be dealt with accordingly, but requires the effort of your whole team instead of just 2 players out of 10. This can create the illusion of a good tactic failing… when in fact it is succeeding, just not on a large enough scale to “win the war”.

And it can be especially hard to get players to cooperate if there are 16 or more of them, and the game of choice is a “join in progress” type game. Those tend to be full of antisocial folks who have no interest in teamplay at all (yet, somehow aren’t above complaining about things that they feel are “unfair”).