Playing to Win review by Splinter Cell’s Clint Hocking
Clint Hocking is Creative Director at Ubisoft Montreal. You may know him from a little game series called Splinter Cell. I've seen Clint in three different Game Developer's Conference sessions over the last two years, and each time I was impressed with his thoughtful, analytical approach.
Anyway, after his latest lecture, I handed him a copy of my book, Playing to Win, and it looks like he liked it and got a lot out of it. Here's what he had to say.
Thanks Clint, I appreciate it. Writing a book is hard and it's nice when someone notices.
--Sirlin
April 11th, 2006 at 8:37 am
Cool review… I wonder if he will rethink his view that gamers shouldn’t try and break/optimize/abuse the game.
April 11th, 2006 at 9:48 am
I think his view is more that a game designer should try to create a game that HAS a solid topology underneath the surface, but that does not call attention to it.
For example, when you see one of those metal carts in Half-life 2, you automatically know a lot about it. It’s pretty stable when it’s on its wheels (low center of gravity). It’s made of metal, so it could stop bullets. It can be reoriented as a shield. It could roll if pushed, etc. Or, consider a red barrel in that game. It has a flat base, so it’s not that easy to knock over, but you can. Once it falls over, you know it will roll all over the place. You can see it’s made of metal, but it pretty clearly isn’t going to be a good bullet shield to hold in front of you because it will blow up if shot. If you need something that can roll over to the enemy, then blow up, you could use one of these barrels and no one really has to explain that to you. You can grasp the various functions of the object without *thinking* about what’s going on underneath. That is what Clint is striving for, and it seems like a fine goal to me.
Perhaps we’ve reminded him that for some gamers, the entire *point* is to get past the pretty exterior and min/max the underlying forces to death. It’s our duty as serious players to know everything we can under the hood. To us, if we can “see the matrix” then we are happy and effective players, and we don’t think that the game designer failed.
Neither side is right or wrong. There are different games for different types of people. Clint’s games seem to sell just fine. ;)
–Sirlin
April 11th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
MIN/MAX!
April 11th, 2006 at 7:07 pm
I really enjoyed your book too, Siriln. It’s just a shame that so few people even know it exists; must read for every competitive gamer in my opinion. How has the sales of that book been going?
April 12th, 2006 at 1:51 am
Ah… I see. Makes sense, would have to concur that it’s a fine endeavor.
April 12th, 2006 at 11:00 am
I think this sentiment in the link below has some similarities to the Playing-to-Win rhetoric:
http://www.proft.org/tips/evil.html
While it’s true that a game’s story and its sense of disbelief are very important elements as well (some games much more than others), there are certainly cliches that can jar you out of the Experience itself. Then again, if you follow the rules about constricting ventilation shaft dimensions and about bounty hunters evening the odds so strictly, you can wind up with not a lot to work with.
April 19th, 2006 at 3:02 am
Wow, there’s a ‘Playing to Win’ book now? I hope Amazon ships to the UK…
“You can grasp the various functions of the object without *thinking* about what’s going on underneath. That is what Clint is striving for, and it seems like a fine goal to me.
Perhaps we’ve reminded him that for some gamers, the entire *point* is to get past the pretty exterior and min/max the underlying forces to death. It’s our duty as serious players to know everything we can under the hood.”
To me, these two approaches seem very complimentary. In a game with affordance that is entirely accurate and honest, the player doesn’t have to spend any time or thought working out what the situation is, and can instead spend these resources dealing with it. At the same time as making the game more immersive for those don’t want to be reminded that it is a simulation, it helps the gamer who is ‘playing to win’ by exposing the ruleset as quickly as possible.
I haven’t played the more recent Splinter Cell games (^5 StarForce!) but I think The Wind Waker does this exceptionally well. (Perhaps too well for some players, as it removes the rather superfluous ‘challenge’ of trying to understand the dungeon problems before you can attempt to solve them!)
May 24th, 2006 at 12:12 am
Hey,
I think the fact that 99% of gamers are unaware of, just like Sirlin says in his “playing to win” article, is that games can be roughly broken up into 2 categories: competitive (i.e. games where the player Plays to Win), and noncompetitive. Furthermore, competitive games can be broken up into games with strategic interaction among players where game theory emerges (e.g. fighting games, first person shooters like quake, real-time strategy), and games without strategic interaction among players (e.g. speedrunning a game, comparing high scores in Bejewled). As such, Clint Hocking’s philosophy makes perfect sense if a designer is designing a noncompetitive game; he just seems to have been unaware, like many people, of the competitive side of gaming-but in his review of Sirlin’s book, he writes how he understands competitive gaming now. It really is an entirely different concept, becasue when one is Playing to Win, one must see the game as just a game and exploit everything one can-whereas often in noncompetitive games, you are role-playing and thus suspension of disbelief is key.
Also, my comments on Sirlin’s book. Sirlin, I’ve read all your articles and am a big fan (I emailed you about Dead or Alive, SNK, and arcade sticks once lol), so I hastily snatched the book up as soon as it became available. My short review is that it’s great how it expands on the (already profound) ideas on the site, fleshing them out. As an economics major, I’ve taken game theory classes and in doing so I appreciate how your Playing to Win article actually really delves into the philosophy *behind* game theory - without any trees, grids, or mention of nash equilibrium in mixed strategies, you have enunciated the central assumption behind game theory - that actors are rational and will choose their highest payoff. Only by Playing to Win, does a videogame player act rationally. My biggest criticism? The stuff written was so interesting, that I wish the book were more than a flimsy 100 pages. I think it should’ve been longer, with many more real-world examples (such as starcraft tips, profiles on players like Daigo and John Choi, etc).