But Sirlin is completely right. If you play Chess and refuse to attack with the Queen because "real queens didn't get sent into battle by their husbands, and certainly could storm towers or defeat heavily-armored cavalrymen by themselves" you're doing it wrong. It is the task of the player to try to win. It is the task of the game designer to make trying to win fun.

As for things like "don't play as Akuma, he's too good" or whatever, that looks like player communities trying to "fix" bad design. That's something that should never have to happen.

It's also a very different thing to play your absolute hardest against a brand-new player. Going easy on the new guy is a good thing to do to get him used to the game, but in that case you're losing on purpose so that the new player won't get frustrated. If I played a friendly game of one-on-one against Shaq one-on-one, I'd expect him to be cool and not dominate me, maybe even let me get a few points. If I played him seriously, I'd expect him to shut me out and score a basket every fifteen seconds.

I agree with Mr. McIntyre above me. Sirlin is right.

Sirlin's article is about competitive gaming. Not single player RPGs, not cooperative group games or party games. He's talking about N number of players sitting down and testing their skills against each other in a competitive game, be it chess or street fighter.

Sirlin is talking about the guy who doesn't use throws in fighting games because "it's cheap," asks his opponent to not rush for 5 minutes, whines about campers in FPS games, etc... That guy is a scrub because he refuses to learn the tactics and strategies that will improve his game and ultimately lead to a more rewarding (and fun) competitive experience.

With Dave Sirlin's extensive experience in the specific genre of fighting games, it's perhaps not too surprising that he tends to favor that lens when evaluating game design.

But Mark Newheiser's commentary gets at the important point that it's a real handicap to have only one lens for thinking about what makes a game good.

Seeing games solely (or even just primarily) as PvP experiences completely misses the reality that some people play games to enjoy being part of a story, while others play games as opportunities to explore systems. Each of these styles of play is equally valid as play-for-security (through competitive accumulation of finite resources) and play-for-stimulation (through the all's-fair "metagaming" that Sirlin advocates)... but some folks don't see things that way.

An "honor code" style of play that treats the magic circle of a gameworld as worthy of respect appears bizarre to a gamer who's naturally wired to see rules as arbitrary. And a gamer who wants to follow the rules of the gameworld out of respect for authority or just to see what happens under those rules is likely to see the metagamer as nothing more than a cheater who, if they aren't cheating opponents, are cheating themselves of the gaming experience intended for them by the game's designer.

Both are right, from their personal point of view. But both are wrong from the point of view that I think a good game designer ought to have, which is that each of these varieties of "fun" is valid and worthy of gameplay.

That doesn't mean every game has to supply equal amounts of content for every style of play (whatever those might be). It's fine for some games to be highly focused on one style -- what's not fine is for a proponent of one style to claim that other styles are less valid and thus that no games with content catering to those styles are worth making.

I would, however, suggest that very large persistent-world games -- MMORPGs, in particular -- probably do need to try to offer a balance of content for different styles of play. If the point is to attract a "massive" number of players, assuming that every potential player will enjoy the same kind of content (or, more accurately, will enjoy all content in the same way) is probably a very poor assumption.

Finally, I'd like to comment on Mark's point that "If you play games with your friends your objective may be to play in a way that ensures everyone can enjoy themselves in a sustainable way."

This reminds me of Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse. Carse's perspective is that the intent of players of a finite game is to end the game, preferably on terms favorable to themselves alone, while the goal of players of an infinite game is to keep the game going to the advantage of every player.

What would an online game look like whose content was all designed to promote infinite play, I wonder?

And what would folks like Dave Sirlin think of such a game?

I kind of disagree with the above posters and with Mr. Sirlin.

People whining because they get their ass kicked online or at a tournament: Sure, it's their own fault for going out into that competetive field.

But when I'm playing a fighting game with friends I may choose not to use certain moves or characters if my opponent is less skilled than I am, because this may make the game more fun for BOTH of us. Where does that fit in with Sirlin's ideas? I'll still be trying to win, mind you, but within the framework of the two characters and movesets that are available. You could argue that means I am changing the game to "fix" bad game design, but I rather appreciate games that offer those kind of options. In Tekken3, for example, I could play a team of two against a team of four if my opponent was less skilled.

On the same note: implying that the "Don't play Akuma" rule is caused by bad game design really bothers me as a game designer. If I make a fighting game you are suggesting I absolutely have to make all the characters completely balanced? That's rediculous! It's way cooler to have some 'underdogs' and some 'overpowered' characters, especially if it fits the backstory of the game (such as in Akuma's case). For the people playing the game it will mean more variety and options: If I suck at Street Fighter my opponent could let me use Akuma a lot, and/or choose one of the less powerful characters themselves. Again: This might be more enoyable to both of us. In my opinion it is perfectly acceptable to take a game's set of options (such as all the characters in a fighting game) and within a social context decide how to handle those options when playing the game. I do not view that as bad game design at all.

According to Sirlin's logic when playing a fighting game you should always quickly set your handicap to the lowest level and then press start before your opponent has the chance to do the same. Then when they complain you are winning because you have twice as much life they would be 'scrubs' unwilling to really use all of the game possibilites? Then the solution would be for them also to rush to set their handicap low and you'd end up with fights that last twice as long because of the extended life bars. And according to Sirlin's logic that would be bad game design?

PS can you tell I like fighting games? :P

One point about my own background in games: I got my start doing board games, and participating in board game groups where you simply arrange games between the people present. In that particular social context, you almost want to avoid behaviors that could knock a player out for the duration of a game or leave them with no viable options to win for purely social reasons, and a game in which one person always wins isn't going to be played very often. A lot of board games take a different approach these days by avoiding player elimination and allowing players to play catch-up more easily, it's almost more of a social exercise than a competitive one.

I guess my main point like Brad Stewart said would be about context: that in some social contexts the philosophy of playing to win just doesn't make sense. I'm used to going off the model where you take a given game and try to mature it and develop it to where it can be enjoyable for everyone involved, rather than taking a given game and trying to refine your strategy so you can always win. In the context of social gaming, a game in which you always win is a game you end up playing alone.

And it's partly for that reason I'm open to players making up their own variants like "no rush for five minute" rules, when an RTS is played competitively the weaker players might be knocked out immediately. It might increase their enjoyment of the game for weaker players to have a few minutes to develop on their own before the competition begins full force, and while it changes the game, I have no objections to trying out a different set of rules and exploring their consequences.

I didn't agree with Sirlin either when I first read Playing To Win. The way he describes scrubs strongly polarizes the discussion, since most casual players can see a little of themselves in his descriptions. As other commenters have noted, the thing to keep in mind is that his discussion is limited to *competitive* gaming. I agree with Sirlin that the only way to enjoy *competitive* gaming is to accept the perspective of Playing To Win.

Playing to Win has nothing to say about casual play, which I think is the idea that motivates this post. Here, there is a lot of room for exploration. How do you design a game that allows players of varying levels of skill and commitment to all have fun? Can games be designed to support both competitive and casual play? Some of our best answers so far I think are co-op and rank-matching systems, but I'm sure there are other ways of tackling this problem. In the end, there are far more house-league players out there than Olympians, so finding ways to make games for them is a worthy challenge.

@david vink: I think you're misconstruing Sirlin's position. He's not saying that anything goes in competitive games - he talks explicitly about tournament rules and sportsmanship. I think he would argue that the ideal competitive game would not require any rules like "don't use akuma" or "leave the handicap at zero" because fairness and balance would be built in. However, these rules are acceptable because they don't really impact the player's behaviour during the game itself, the way scrub rules like "no throws" or "don't attack before I'm ready" do. You can design games with intentional imbalances in them, they're just not suitable for competitive play.

Mark, having "no rush for five minutes" rules in RTS games indicates that you don't understand the game. Good RTS games tend to have balances where certain technologies take longer to build, but leave the player vulnerable to attack or unable to acquire additional resources while the technology is being developed. Rushing is the intended counter to this. Saying "you aren't allowed to rush me" changes the game, making your preferred tactic overpowered. What if I'm a player who likes to rush? Why is my "rushing" tactic forbidden, but your "teching" tactic is OK? What if I decide to declare "nobody can have more than two defensive towers in their base at any time" as a rule? This benefits my rushing tactic, and makes it harder for you to defend while you research your technology.

When you start making "house rules" like that, what you do is take the existing game and change it into your own version. The big fault with this is that you're assuming that you know what the game needs better than the designer, and you are almost certainly wrong if the game is well-made. In addition, you will not be able to experience the deeper levels of depth because you've arbitrarily decided to change the rules. In the RTS example, a race that has awesome high-tech units, but weak low-tech units will always win over the race with great early-game stuff and weaker late-game stuff. The whole interplay between those races is the high-tech race trying to stave off the low-tech race while building their super-army. By making a "no rushing" rule, you've just completely destroyed the balance and you now cannot experience the game.

For humor's sake, imagine one of those pay-per-view fights, like UFC, except the kickboxer steps into the ring and says "No tackling me. Real men fight standing up." and the wrestler says "No, tackling is fair and there are lots of ways to avoid getting tackled. No punching in the face, and no kicking, though. That's dirty, and a good fighter can fight clean." It's ridiculous! The game is all about the balance between multiple elements.

If there's an element or tactic that keeps beating you, you need to learn to play better! Banning every "too-effective" tactic, as Sirlin said, just dumbs down the game and forces players to find the next tactic on the list that still works and isn't banned (yet). And worse yet, when you ban a "too-effective" tactic, you may have ruined the balance because that tactic might be necessary to stop some other tactic from being "too-effective!"

One of the problems with SF is the large amount of luck involved in the game. For a complete discussion of just where that luck presents itself look at this discussion on the Playstation forums:

http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=streetfighter
&thread.id=2796&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

A large part of that "scrub" playing, as Sirlin describes it, is due to the fact that there is so much luck involved. The so called "scrub" players recognize this luck mechanic and lose interest because no matter how good they get they know a large portion of the game is still going to be luck based. In contrast, look at the first person shooter genre where aim = skill = competition. No one complains about luck in FPS games aside from the occasional rage yelling, "lucky HS!" after a headshot which they know is just a silly reaction.

No matter the situation in an FPS there is always a way to be better than your opponent, whether that be to avoid the encounter altogether and meet at a later time with more advantageous positioning or simply being cornered and whoever aims quicker is the victor. It is in YOUR hands as a player to be successful or fail. The problem with many fighting games is that there are points in the game that it is not in the players hands on whether they win or lose, it is a pure guessing game. The discussion at the Playstation forums gets into this concept more in depth. If you don't understand exactly where the luck is and the difference between unavoidable luck and avoidable luck then read it.

I believe that for there to be a true "Playing to Win" attitude the game has to be fully skill based with no unavoidable luck involved, and please understand the difference between avoidable luck and unavoidable luck. If you ask a "scrub" player their #1 gripe about Street Fighter they would probably say "throwing". To an extent they are right, that is one of the fundamental mechanics that introduce this unavoidable luck based gameplay. You'll probably have to read the Playstation forums posts to understand what I'm talking about.

Neil,

Playing To Win does address casual play, actually, in the context of playing with new players and in the context of exploring other areas. Sirlin says that players sometimes "hone suboptimal tactics" by trying to win every single match. He says that trying out "weird" moves or tactics that seem risky is often a good idea. Not in a tournament, of course, but outside of a tournament, to find those obscure things that will enable you to win in the kind of rare situations that come up in high-level tournaments. He also mentions playing characters (in fighting games) who you wouldn't normally play, because you never know when some character nobody uses turns out to have some really good, underappreciated tactics.

B N, if there's so much "luck" in Street Fighter games, then why are there a small number of players who can dominate tournaments so reliably? If the game really had a lot of "luck" to it, that wouldn't be the case. You don't see a World Champion Coin-Toss Caller, do you? Low-level players don't "realize" that there's luck involved "no matter how good they get." That's just patently false.

Also, FPS games absolutely do have luck involved. Because they're played online, and if my neighbor starts streaming or BitTorrenting a bunch of high-def movies, my connection can get laggy all of a sudden and make my controls unfairly clunky.

I'd absolutely agree that a no-rushing rule "breaks" the game and distorts the balance towards strategies involving heavy teching and races that benefit more from longer term investments. And I'd agree that a well designed full RTS has a lot more depth possible when everything is on the table, the possibility of attack always being there makes each phase of the game more about balancing immediate risk and payoff.

But I'm not arguing for the legitimacy of playing that way because I want to avoid losing, I do all right. But if I'm playing with an inexperienced players, it's a way to emulate the single-player experience where the computer is a little more merciful in not engaging them until they're prepared. And if my games have been dominated by early attacks and regular aggression to where we haven't been scaling the tech tree all the way, I have no problem with just suggesting we try something different by holding off a bit longer and see where it gets us. It's a little bit like joining a custom map some user designed: it's much less likely to be well balanced or have a larger depth of strategy, but it can be fun, and there's the chance it might lead to a variant of the game that proves interesting.

As a less controversial example, Call of Duty 4 lets you configure your servers to turn specific weapons on or off, enable or disable radar, set player health, turn off grenade launchers, and so on. I consider that to be a more easily manageable substitute to just telling your fellow players "let's not use grenades this game" to see where that gets you. All these things have their purpose, and you may have a lot more confidence in the default setup than anything you can set up yourself, but tweaking a game's configuration forces everyone to adapt to something different, which can shake up the balance as well.

A well balanced game may take years to master, a variant of the game you tweak yourself may reveal its flaws after several sessions. But it can still be enjoyable and may even prove to have some depth, and I consider playing with the rules to be a legitimate part of the gaming experience.

@ Bob McIntyre

You obviously didn't understand the difference between unavoidable luck and avoidable luck because you didn't read the discussion I posted. There are a small number of players that can dominate because they are good at avoiding the avoidable luck situations. They do not avoid the unavoidable luck situations, no one does, and when it balances itself out they are better players overall, but they still fall victim to the unavoidable luck situations. Limiting this unavoidable luck is the key to fully skill based gameplay.

Here is a post from the discussion that summarizes what I'm talking about:

"This is a reply to all those on page 3. I think some of you are not really getting what I am saying. I can tell you don't get what I'm saying because of your replies. I know there is that first layer of rock - paper - scissors (i.e. shoryuken beating claw dive like you said) and other strategies (baiting, spacing, zoning, etc). That first layer is the one all of you are talking about. That is the underlying strategy involved, I'm not debating that layer, it is fine.

The layer I am debating is the unavoidable non-reactive rock - paper - scissors game. Those times that you're getting up and both players have to decide in an instant what to do and whoever chooses wrong suffers. Those times when you're blockstringed and dashed in on and in the same instant both players have to decide an action and whoever is wrong suffers. Those times you're deep jumped in on and in the same instant both players have to decide an action and whoever is wrong suffers. These are all examples of non reactive rock - paper - scissors games. I don't know about you guys, but to me that is too much luck based gameplay. One of you even semi-confirmed what I was talking about with your statement about if you're playing people of the same level your win percent won't be past 60%. That is an absolutely true statement because that is about the percentage that all the luck involved allows for a person to obtain. Play enough matches of rock - paper - scissors against someone and chances are you will be about even with them over time.

At the average-pro level a large part of the game is devoted to setting up these luck based mini games because they're unavoidable, and by being unavoidable skill gives way to luck. One bad guess and it can lead to a combo ending in an ultra. The combo to the ultra is the same as a knockout in a real fight. The difference being that in the real fight you could choose not to participate in their little "bad guesser gets knocked out guessing game", and play it safe instead. In SF, there will eventually (usually multiple times during a single match) come a time when you encounter this unavoidable guessing game where you can't play it safe, you're forced into the luck based guessing game. To me this is a flaw that introduces too much luck into the game. Again, I'm not hating on SF at all, it is what it is, and it is fun. However, I think it is a good thing to be aware of the fact that a good portion of the game is luck based. Being aware of this fact allows us to know that there is still room for improvement in the fighting game genre."

B N, Rock-Paper-Scissors is not a "luck" game. There's a world championship for it. There are competitions to make computer programs that play RPS against each other. It's an intense mental game, but it's not luck. The same thing happens with Poker. What cards you get? That's luck. How you act and place bets and read your opponents over many rounds? That's skill, and that's why there are world champions in that game.

Calling it "avoidable luck" is an oxymoron, too. For example, I am "lucky" not to have been hit by a drunk driver at 3 AM on January 1st, right? But it's not really luck, and the reason is that I don't go out on the road at that time because I know that there are lots of drunks roaring around recklessly. I prepare myself in advance so that I don't have to be out there at that time. This is not luck. This is good planning. If I go out there and am subjected to the "luck" game of whether or not they'll just cross the median and hit me, that's my fault for getting into it.

I also don't know how in a "real" sport bout you could choose not to participate in their "loser gets knocked out" challenge. I'm pretty sure that stepping into the ring means that you are now playing that game.

What I'm saying here is that you don't understand the game and you're blaming the game itself for that fact. Rock-Paper-Scissor and Street Fighter are games of skill and they have world champions to prove it.

One other comment on altering a game's rules btw:

Competitive gamers generally want something very different out of their games than casual gamers. Smash Brawl's default setting is to have a bunch of random items show up that can tilt the balance of the game all over the place, which can be turned off for more serious tournament games. There's generally a list of approved and disallowed stages as well for a match, some stages are sometimes found to be broken thanks to a certain character's move, just like some maps in RTSs are excluded from ladder play for having asymmetries.

Playing your games "to win" means that exclude all aspects of a game's design that don't lend itself to that level of play, which may be a majority of the game's stages and may require excluding a few characters. And on top of that, it requires that you optimize your own strategies, which may end up with everyone picking the same small group of top tier characters. If you want to be free to explore the rest of the game's content, you have to step outside that model.

I appreciate games which are flexible enough to adapt their configurations to the variety that more casual players prefer and the honed perfection that competitive gamers appreciate, and I consider the freedom to tweak the rules as you want to be just another part of adapting the game to how the players want to enjoy it.

Before I read B N's post, I was expecting the "luck" he was referring to was more along the lines of "I will do these 3 moves in succession regardless of his moves because they will work out for me in the end." But that poster from the other forums is missing a major aspect to both SF and RPS, and Bob hinted at it: the mental game.

Playing competitively against someone, you can come to understand their personality, and can predict their type of play. Sometimes you can even memorize their patterns. There is no luck in this aspect. It is completely "responsive" because you are responding to a flow of play style, not just an individual move. The post author is looking at the situation through a microscope on a move by move basis, and not the metagame of the overall match and psychological interaction. For this reason my wife beats me at RPS all the time, she knows my mental state and how I will attack.

That said, although I agree with a lot of what Bob has said, in the RPS community there are "moves" like "rock, rock, rock" or "paper, rock, paper" and you go in and do that pattern no matter what. This kind of play is non-repsonsive luck based, and tournaments are played and won like this. So I guess I just backed up B N and his posts.

Hooray for not taking a firm side!

I do agree with Sirlin more on the overall topic of scrubs in competitive play, but I found the article an interesting read and perspective.

"Smash Brawl's default setting is to have a bunch of random items show up that can tilt the balance of the game all over the place, which can be turned off for more serious tournament games."

HA! Mark proved that even tournament players can be scrubs. :)

Also, I am going to go out on a limb and say that the term "luck" may be used to describe the "unknown" for a lot of people. If I, Joe Anybody, play Soul Calibur against an excellent tournament player and he deflects multiple attacks and seems to predict my moves, I would write it off as luck. But there are incredibly talented individuals who can recognize a move by the first few frames of its animation, and have the timing of moves memorized to a single frame count. Just because they know the ins and outs, and you don't, doesn't mean it's luck.

Regarding RTS players who just one set of tactics over and over without responding to their opponent: Either these players are playing a badly-designed game, or they're not the top players. Admittedly, I do the same thing. Sometimes I'll just pick a tactic and go with it. I'm not the best RTS player, but sometimes it works for me. In this case, it often comes down to execution or micromanagement. Sometimes it's even a calculated risk. For example, a "six-pool" zergling rush in Starcraft is much safer on a small, 2-player map than on a large, 8-player map, because the large map has a risk of attacking the wrong starting location one or more times, wasting time, and letting the enemy build enough troops to brush off your attack casually by the time it arrives. But again, that is not luck. That is a choice to take a risk.

Sirlin's statement about items in Smash is that players who "turtle" at the narrow top areas of the map are less likely to get useful items because they can only catch things dropped right onto them. In that way, the items act as a balance mechanism to keep players from turtling at the top of the screen. I don't play Smash, so I don't know, but if the items really do reduce the skill in the game to the point where any player can beat any other, then it's just bad design because the game has no skill involved.

Hey Bob, I was actually saying RPS, as in Rock Paper Scissors. Sorry, didn't mean to confuse.

The creator of Smash has stated, and I'm paraphrasing from other people quoting him, that he wants to create a level playing field for everyone. He doesn't want the most skilled person to win every time. That said, just because you pick up an item in Smash, doesn't guarantee a win. You have to know how to use it, and there are ways to counter it. But a lot of "scrubs" think some items are too cheap and they need to be turned off.

I like turning off the heart container. :)

Whether or not a "cheap" moves wins all the time is largely irrelevant. As an example, I used to play online hockey games. Just about every sports game ever released has some degree of "cheap" moves that are simply known to be reliable ways to game the AI. Now, yes, a "good" player should be able to learn to outplay people who use those moves. And, playing hockey online, I was able to develop strategies that enabled me to beat players who tried to use the same move to score every time. And you know what? I was completely bored. I had way more fun losing to someone who was creative than I did when I beat someone who was "cheap". I didn't complain about people being cheap because I couldn't beat them - I was beating them! I complained about it because it was *boring*.

Austin, sorry, I thought you were making an analogy. You did write "RPS" and I misread it! However, players who do that sort of "rock, paper, rock" thing blindly will be destroyed by good competitors. Look at the computerized competition for RPS. Computers are easier to use than humans for this game because a computer can play 1000 matches in a short period of time, whereas a human can't (and probably wouldn't want to!).

Adam: If you're beating the other person consistently and they're just doing the same "cheap" move over and over again, that means three things. Number one, you absolutely should be bored. Your opponent isn't providing you with a challenge, he's just playing badly and doing the same dumb thing over and over. That's boring in any game. Number two, a "cheap" move is usually one that is easy to do and is unstoppably powerful. So whatever he's doing isn't "cheap" because it doesn't work. That's a good sign about the game. And number three, the guy who plays "creatively" and is beating you is a good opponent for you, so that definitely should be fun! You're not quite good enough to beat him, but you're close enough that he has to get creative to beat you. That means you're having a close, competitive match, and that's where a game should be the most fun. If there were a single "cheap" move that worked every time, that would mean that the game is bad.

I think some people are really missing the point of Sirlin and I highly suggest reading the rest of his articles as well. What follows is a butchered attempt to impart some of the principals of Playing to Win...

There's nothing wrong with being a scrub. Sure it's used as an insult most of the time but in Sirlin's context it's used simply as a way to describe people who aren't trying to compete at the highest levels possible. If you don't want to compete at the highest levels you don't have to Play to Win. Sirlin is not suggesting everyone should do everything possible to beat their friend to a bloody pulp if they're never going to go to tournaments or try to become the best.

Limiting options in tournaments is the result of people wanting to play a game competitively that's not suited to handle it. Smash is a perfect example as there are no other games that fill the void. People enjoy smash and want to play it competitively as it's own unique genre yet it's poorly setup to be played as such. Since there's no other game to fill the void players have to strip out the luck and and non competitive elements on their own. Stages are banned because they're lucked based (random events) or they aren't tournament friendly (allows for infinite stalling of matches). Players ban characters (Akuma) because they're dominant strategies that can't be patched. Characters like Akuma are said to be on the god tier, with them in the game they're the only viable choice for competition. Without akuma there's a set of viable choices. Top tier players realize this and decide to make the ban to open up the game.

What's NOT banned are things that may appear unbeatable but aren't. Spamming the same move over and over is almost never an uncounterable move. There's pretty much always a way for a top tier player to get around the situation. Additionally such things can't be banned because they'll either have no effect or they're no enforceable. If you can only spam a move 3 times in a row before doing something else to prevent spamming of said move then the dominant strategy is to spam the move 3 times in a row. Such a 'ban' has changed nothing and improved nothing.

Games like RTS which are patched rarely have arbitrary rule limitations. Certain maps are favored/banned based on their balance but that's about as far as it goes. Why shouldn't a tournament select a map set that favors all races equally? How is selecting maps dominated by Terran good for competition? You could do it and then all players would show up playing Terran. So instead tournaments ban those maps to promote diversity and the players go along with it because they realize it's good for the game. If the tournament allowed for imabalanced maps then players would play to win, choose the proper race for the map, and go with it. From the individual's point of view you never restrict yourself within tournament rules. Tournaments restrict the rules to promote competition and game developers generally sit around on their behinds doing nothing to promote competition.

Also applying Playing to Win to AI is pretty silly and something Sirlin has never said as far as I can tell. Why would you need to win against AI? Other than high score challenges you only play AI for enjoyment which is NOT playing to win.

I know where you're coming from with this post, but your FF6 counter-example of bug exploitation is flawed: FF6 is not a competitive game, and therefore counters nothing Sirlin has said. Sirlin has approached this idea of Playing to Win from a competitive nature, and his argument is that in order to win in such a field, one must remove certain arbitrary notions. That argument also does nothing to help your ideas of socialization because it's a single player game.

This isn't the first time someone has tried to mention why a player would not want to play competitively and use non-competitive examples. The problem is that these contexts don't stand because the very idea of Playing to Win is within the arena of competition. You can't ask Roger Federer not to use his forehand, or ask Tiger Woods to kindly use a plastic set of golf clubs in the same manner that if I played David Sirlin in SF Alpha 2, that I ask him not to play Rose and kill me with low medium punch.

On the flip side, there are situations where one plays a competitive game in a casual setting. But how far should someone have to play down? I can play a character in SF4 I'm not as good at, and that's fine. No throwing against a newbie? Maybe, but it already takes effort to not capitalize on openings that I see. Should I stop using special moves consistently if my opponent doesn't have his memorized? And how bad do I need to be with my normal moves? Coming from the perspective of an experienced player, there's a limit to how far I can gimp myself without looking like I'm just toying with someone or being a bully. I think you've addressed this by saying that it's bad form to outright throw a match. What you don't address is the complete lack of fun it is for the person who has to make so many concessions. There are many times where I've been in the arcade and had to watch how I play just to protect someone's feelings. But you speak of social contracts to protect others' search for fun. Who protects mine?

Sirlin wrote what he wrote so casual players can get a good glimpse of the other side. A lot of competitive folks have been asked to be understanding of others, and yet scrubs never reciprocate. That's the mentality he's really attacking. It's the expectation that everyone must play in a way that protects their sensibilities. Sure, Playing to Win is a piece which talks about how to play, but as preachy as Sirlin might sound... he isn't telling anyone that they MUST play to win. He is saying, however, that if you drop a quarter in the arcade against to someone who's good, or encounter a strong player online, yet keep an arbitrary code of honor/chosen method of playstyle that may be sub-optimal, and lose, *you don't have a right to complain about the actions of the other player*. It is in this essential idea that he's pointing out to people to have a losing expectation when they hold themselves back.

It's not that he discourages or hates on exploration of new tactics or new ways to play. So many people get stuck on this point, and the irony here is that you haven't explored his thoughts on this fully. A "scrub" mentality, in this case, picks some sub-optimal methodology, uses that to justify why he loses, and in some cases, calls everyone an a-hole for not doing it. That's not exploration. That's fixation. And in the end, since no one can expect a player to bend over for someone to artificially win, it's not like the scrub is going through a genuinely edifying process. Then who's having fun? No one.

Almost forgot! 'Luck' only applies to games when an RNG is invovled (crit %s, random item spawns, etc.) things that APPEAR random but aren't don't count (spawn systems in most games for example). What also doesn't count is things that are 'yomi' or 'mindgames'. http://www.sirlin.net/articles/yomi-layer-3-knowing-the-mind-of-the-opponent.htm
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I'd interpret Adam's case a bit differently than Bob. I think that if you're always winning by using the same cheap moves you have a few options: 1) You can try a different game because the one you're playing may not have sufficient depth of strategy to make it interesting. 2) You can try to find better opponents who knock you out of your rut by proving there is a better way to play 3) You can decide to change your strategy and not play with what seems to be a cheap overpowered move and see if anything interesting results from that.

The third option isn't playing to win, but it might be a chance to make the game more interesting for yourself and get more challenge out of it by exploring a different aspect.

@Josh Chan

Teaching someone a game or simply playing with someone who's not on your level can be a grueling experience for both parties. The more experienced player doesn't want to be a jerk and beat up on the guy, and the less experienced player doesn't want to completely lose because of things he doesn't understand. I've noticed that some board games deliberately include simplified alternate rulesets for beginning players so that it's easier for people to pick up a game at a certain level without being overwhelmed by complexity or left hopelessly in the dust.

The only thing which makes sense to me is to try to find some way in which everyone can enjoy themselves. For the more experienced player, that might be exploring a character or tactic they're less familiar with so that their knowledge isn't as big of a handicap, and for the less experienced player that may just mean accepting that until you practice more you're probably going to lose and that's just how games work. But it's a two-way street, and I suppose I was writing more in defense of the "scrub" than the experienced player this time around.

You aren't understanding what I'm saying because you obviously don't play, or understand SF. When you are knocked down (and in other situations I already mentioned) you're given a single instant at which point you have to select an action, you can't react to anything because both players have to input their decided action at the same time. That is a fact, a game mechanic of the game. At that point the game becomes unavoidable luck. By stepping into a "real" sport bout you are choosing to participate in a test of skill, to find out who the better boxer is. You aren't choosing to participate in 75% boxing match and 25% rock - paper - scissors tournament. That isn't to say that you can't take some risks during the match that rely on luck (avoidable luck), but you do not have to if you don't want to. In SF you HAVE to participate in that luck game, the game forces you into it at various instances.

I'm glad you brought up poker because why is it that new people are always winning the world championship of poker? Why is it new faces show up in the tournament final table each and every year? Why is it that so called "pros" are often times eliminated so quickly? Why is it that so called "pros" can't win another championship most of the time? Why is it that this years winner probably will be forgotten next year? It is because a large portion of the game is luck based. Sure, there is some skill just like there is skill in SF, but just because there is skill involved doesn't mean a large part of it isn't also luck based.

Your little not going out on Jan 1st example doesn't work against the unavoidable luck argument. It actually helps my argument of avoidable luck. You still aren't getting the difference between avoidable and unavoidable luck, and this very example tells me that. Not being hit by a drunk driver because you never decided to go out on the street is avoidable luck. Someone taking you at gun point to the highway, facing you to where you can't see traffic, giving you ear plugs so you can't hear where the cars are coming from and then telling you to decide which lane to stand in is unavoidable luck.

I am blaming the game for this, what should I blame? I agree with Sirlin that the players shouldn't be blamed for optimizing their game by taking advantage of everything the game has to offer. The game allows for this unavoidable luck, and I'm not even faulting it for that. I'm simply bringing it to people's attention that it does exist, and exactly what constitutes it. I'm not even trying to re-balance SF, it is what it is. I'm trying to come up with what makes it what it is though, so that maybe a game in the future can address some of the problems.

Just to show a little bit about what I'm talking about I analyzed a random pro SFIV game and took notes and estimated amount of damage taken due to luck. The video is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m78XQcHntSk

My analysis of unavoidable luck damage is:

RD1:

:15 10% RYU
:19 10% RYU
:23 2% RYU
:29 4% CHUN-LI
:37 0%

RYU = 22% damage taken due to luck
CHUN-LI = 4% damage taken due to luck

RD2:

1:04 11% RYU
1:11 5% RYU
1:16 0%
1:35 0%

RYU = 16% damage taken due to luck
CHUN-LI = 0% damage taken due to luck

RD3:

2:01 10% CHUN-LI
2:08 0%

RYU = 0% damage taken due to luck
CHUN-LI = 10% damage taken due to luck

What does this show? It shows that no matter what whether you're a pro or not these unavoidable luck moments will arise, and when they do it is out of your hands and up to luck on whether you take damage or not.

See you were probably thinking that I thought the entire game is luck, but that's not what I'm saying at all. As you can see I realize that the luck portion of the game is not that large, but it still does exist. The setting up of the unavoidable luck mini game isn't what I am criticizing. The mini game itself is what I'm criticizing. A player should not be forced into a guessing mini game. It should be their choice to participate in that part of the game or not. At the moment that the mini game is initiated by one of the players they both have to do it.

At each timestamp above both players were faced with an instant decision of which action they would take and whoever guessed right would be the one doing the damage. That small part of the gameplay is the unavoidable luck game, and it will be initiated at multiple times during any SF match. This match actually played out very safe because both people had some very good guesses, but I'm sure there are some pro matches out there where entire matches were won because of a bad guess.

Oh, and for what it's worth, RPS is definitely in a different category of skill than fully determined games with complete information like Chess or something. But just like there are legitimate games of strategy like Stratego where players have access to different pieces of information and make secret choices, there's a mindgame element to it of trying to out-think the other guy. It's still not pure luck unless you carry a random number generator with you and base all your decisions on it to avoid getting outsmarted, but it's a very different class of skill with more uncertainty dependent upon your opponent.

@Josh Chan
Good summary/counterpoint. The playing to win argument is often misunderstood or misrepresented. Your comment gets the point across well.

@B N
I am not sure what your criticism of the specific mechanics of SF have to do with this, but it seems like you don't understand the game. Nothing is being introduced randomly by the game, it is entirely up to the people holding the controllers to determine the outcome of a match. And yes, I understand why it seems like luck when you pick a move in the examples you gave, but it simply isn't.

The comparison to Rock-Paper-Scissors is apt. If you don't know what you are doing or how the game is played, it seems random, but if you do, there is a lot of strategy involved. It comes down to mind games, as Sirlin often points out.

@ Jeff Beaudoin

You can't say "yes, I understand why it seems like luck when you pick a move in the examples you gave, but it simply isn't." without backing it up with why it isn't. I have backed up why it is. I have said that there are two types of luck the avoidable and the unavoidable. If you have played SF you would know that those instances I labeled in the video are unavoidable at that very moment. The next action at all of those moments has to be a guess by both players, there is no way around it.

How does this relate to the "Playing to Win" article? Playing to win involves knowing the system and using everything that system has to win. Part of that system (in SF) involves forcing a player to participate in a guessing mini game. Yes, one of the two players has to initiate that guessing game, but going by the ideals of Playing to Win one of the two will often employ that part of the system and by doing so will introduce luck into the equation. So the game doesn't "randomly introduce" luck to the game on its own, but it is introduced because the players that are "playing to win" will introduce the game mechanic on a regular basis.

I am not saying mind games are not involved, but just because mind games are present does not mean luck is not. Rock - paper - scissors involves no luck whatsoever? Really? You want to lie? If you try to notice a pattern while playing someone in rock - paper - scissors you can devise a strategy of mind games all you want, but ultimately when it comes right down to it it is your guess against theirs, and no skill-based fighting game should have a mechanic that players will use to put other players in this unavoidable and instant situation where luck is present. A fighting game should be based around reactions to actions, like real fighting. Unavoidable luck is not present in any real fighting.

I am NOT complaining about SF. I am not complaining because I think a tactic is "too cheap", as Sirlin says. I am simply showing that the game does have luck in its mechanics, and by the mechanics very existence players will introduce that luck to the game (Playing to Win). This is not me complaining because I get owned on SF. This is me analyzing game mechanics on a website devoted to "the art and business of making games".

B N, what your describing isn't luck, as in guessing the correct choice from a set whose order is chosen randomly. Good SF players don't choose their moves randomly. Good SF players aren't guessing either, their anticipating, breaking down an opponent's strategy in order to determine what their next move is and making decisions based on this.

@ Ivan K. Myers Jr.

You can anticipate all you want, but in the end it comes down to luck of the draw as to if the move you choose hits your opponent. A skill based game should not be left up to this guessing game whether you want to call it luck or not, it is a mandatory guessing game. I hate to have to say it again, but I don't think you are getting what I'm saying so I'll try to say it as simply as I can.

SF has two layers:

layer 1: far distance game, mid distance game, sweep distance game
layer 2: close distance game

Layer 2 with the close distance game is the layer that has the mandatory guessing game, all the other distances do not. Any guessing games present in layer 1 are optional and reaction based. The thing that makes layer 2 so different than the rest is the unblockable throw. That throw alone makes it so that anytime anyone is close you have to participate in a mandatory guessing game of either throw reverse, jump, block, or hit. You cannot react off of anything at this point, the distance has determined that both players must instantly without any time to react to each other choose a command just like after 1 - 2 - 3... two rock paper scissors players would have to choose a command.

So in essence you have "layer 1: The street fighter layer" and "layer 2: the rock paper scissors layer". Layer 1 is skill based, reaction based, mind game based. Layer 2 is mind game based and luck based. The thing missing from layer 2 is reaction. When the distance occurs there is nothing to react to it boils down to a pure guessing game. I'm not denying there is a mind game present at layer 2, but there is also luck present because of the mandatory and non reactive nature of layer 2.

What B N says has some merit to it. All competitive games have an element of luck to them. Or a better word to use would be chance. You can never empirically know what your opponent will do, but you can make an educated guess. In a fighting game you may know what the current attack is, and you can take a pretty good guess at what's coming next, but you usually cannot know, hell your opponent can stop at just the one attack and not finish off a combo. Sure things like profiling your opponent as you play can increase your chance of guessing their moves, but many good players can switch about how they play to avoid an opponent who's predicting their moves, so this tends to even out.

In an fps a gun usually has a random spread, some being more or less random. Players take this into account pretty well, but sometimes, someone will get killed when they had a very low chance of it happening, simply because the random scatter caused something to hit home. There are a few other chance related effects but that's the primary one.

RTS's are on the low end of the scale when it comes to chance, but there are occasionally dice rolls involved.

But if there is so much luck how does one become good at such games, it's like anything that requires probability, you reduce risk for yourself and increase it for your opponent. In an fps skilled players tend to move about quite randomly to throw off their opponents aim, many then take a weapon with a decent scatter to it so they can run and gun efficiently. Others prefer to reduce the risk by never entering into a situation where their guns miss chance matters, these are the campers and snipers of the fps world, but no good player fights a sniper with a shotgun intentionally from halfway across a map.

In many fighting games there is a lot of luck involved, but there are also moves that are easy to read and those that are hard to read, and the mind game is how you try to throw people off. When the mind game works, guess what, you were lucky, sure you might be skilled, but all you truly did was choose the option that gave you the best chance for success at that particular time, nothing you did "guaranteed" success. Just like when I have no better option in a shooting game I will spray my highly inaccurate gun at the sniper who has me dead to rights, because 99/100 times that sniper kills me, but that one time I survive makes it worth trying, it maximises my chance for survival. (sure I run and jump and leap and duck like a mad man as well =P )

I suppose ultimately that all fits into playing to win anyway, because it's recognising the best chance for victory and thus making maximum use of the games mechanics. It's a different type of skill but still a very important one.

I can wholeheartedly advise all game designers to read the "Timmy, Johnny, Spike" system from Magic the Gathering. It explains 3 different kind of gamers that play that particular kind of game, and explains -why- they play it, what they're looking for.

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr258

Spike would be the competitive player. He likes to win. But underneath that, there's another goal. Spike likes to be challenged, likes to overcome those challenges. He plays Magic because its a test of skill and he wants to prove he's good at it. The same could be applied to any (multiplayer) game; Sometimes when I play an FPS online, I just want to 'be the best', have the best skills. Oh, Spike wants to win by being the best, he might -hate- winning through luck. Winning is meaningless if it doesn't prove superior skill.

Timmy on the other hand, just plays for the experience, to have a good time. He couldn't care less about the outcome of the game, he just wants to have fun. Timmy and Spike don't play well together ofter. Spike will perform actions which are perceived by Timmy as unfair and unfun, whereas Timmy doesn't appreciate the competitive element which ruins the feeling of challenge for Spike. Over time, I've learned to be less 'Spike' and more Timmy when playing family games with the family, as this is just the mindset they're playing with.

Johhny might be less applicable to other games, as it's the creative type that wants to show off how out-of-the-box he can be. Then again, sometimes I go for 'weird' tactics in online shooters, just to do that, show how weird I can be.


There are simply different types of gamers, and all just want to have fun in their own way. There's no right or wrong here. As designers, we can be aware of these differences and cater specifically, and as gamers, we should be aware of these differences and understand one another better, get along some more =)

B N, you're just not getting it. RPS is not "luck." Knowing the mind of an opponent is an element of a lot of games, and SF is one such game. If two players land in a situation where they both have to throw out one move without seeing what the other player is doing, that's often called a rock-paper-scissor minigame. But just because I don't see your move doesn't mean I can't figure out what it will be. If I've played the mind game right, I've gotten into your head and figured out (or messed with) your thinking, and you'll make the move I want you to make. Real boxers do this, too. They drop their guard to bait headhunters. They hit the other guy hard in the body with the same combination several times, then start that combination, fake for the body, and attack the head. They're using patterning to get their opponent to do what they want. There's no "luck" in this whatsoever. It's skill. There's more to the game than just the physical, and this goes for SF or boxing.

Jonathon and Toby have already said what I was going to.

The only thing I can add that hasn't already been said is in regards to the "Don't play as Akuma, he's too good." There's something you're neglecting when you make this statement. Akuma is breaks the game design for the game Super Street Fighter II: Turbo. He could literally just keep an opponent blocking in the corner by throwing Dual-air fireballs and ground fireballs in combination. There is nothing the receiving player can do to stop this. They either eat the fireballs, or receive block damage until they are killed. That's just broken.

Whereas in Street Fighter IV Sagat is arguably the top character in the game. He has more advantageous move set than the rest of the cast. Sirlin would not have any issues with someone using Sagat because he doesn't break the gameplay. He's just a better character. But when you have one character who leaves a player with a 0% chance of escape 100% of the time, that's just wrong.

Matt, I think that the point about "don't use Akuma" is that it's a design flaw. The only reason it doesn't ruin the game is that it's such an extreme design flaw that players at practically every level of skill can recognize it, and Akuma is an element that is easily removed. A far worse problem would be if an otherwise-balanced character, like Ken or Guile or Dhalsim, had one specific game-breaking move. It's much more "invasive" to go in and say "this character's fine, but you can't use this one move" than it is to say "nobody use the secret character who murders everybody."

But the second part of that point is that players shouldn't ever have to make that call, and it's something of a slippery slope once they begin. It would be nice if Capcom had put in a "tournament VS" mode or something like that, where Akuma isn't available. While we're at it, their recent online ventures would be nicer if they allowed double-blind character selection. I personally am not a fan of playing the "wait and pick the countering character" game at the character-select screen.

I don't personally mind the lack of double-blind. But that's just me as a player, I stick to one character and use him regardless of counter matchups.

@Bob
It's the same deal with Akuma as it is with Ken or Guile. To competitive players a character being a 'boss' or 'secret' isn't really an issue. Everyone is going to know about said character if they're serious about the game. Having one move that cannot be countered is the same as being a godly character, having a 2nd uncounterable move or set of moves is not really needed. If Ken, Ryu, or Guile had one overpowered move that can't be countered then the whole character would be banned rather than the move as it's possible to enforce and obey.

This isn't a zero sum argument. I don't play to win or play for challenge. I play games to have fun. Sometimes (say if was playing Sirlin at Bushido Blade) that means going all out, exploiting the system, and playing to win. Sometimes it means throwing the game or playing down to someone's level so *they* have fun, because that's enjoyable for me. And sometimes it means abandoning what the designers wanted me to do entirely (I'm thinking of a certain track in RalliSport, where launching off a rock was much more fun than racing the track). Bottom line, how to play is totally situational for many players.

Chris, saying "I play games to have fun" misses the entire analytical side of this discussion. Fun is the intended end result for the consumer. As game developers, our concern is to understand the systems that allow us to create fun games. If we make a multiplayer, competitive game and players end up launching off of rocks because it's more than actually racing, and this isn't what we intended, then we've failed, and our players will probably move on quickly. They're bored with our game to the point that they're not even really playing it even when they're sitting on their couches playing it! Instead of engaging in the activity we designed, they've abandoned our ideas and are trying to amuse themselves with silly diversions that will almost certainly be short-lived. Regarding "playing down" to other players, that's been mentioned several times already.

There's nothing wrong with finding games inside of the designed game. Take for example "Cat & Mouse" user created rules for Project Gotham Racing 2, you can look it up.

Or even better, Rose Ball for Street Fighter IV (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDvs1i1hfag) where the users set handicap to lowest (one hit wins) and play "pong" with a projectile. You can already see strategies being created due to dashing forward to decrease the time to react.

@ Bob McIntyre

No, you're missing the point which is evident by your examples of boxers. The examples you give of a boxer are equal to "Layer 1: Street Fighter Layer" (which includes mind games). Nothing in boxing is equal to pausing the match and telling someone that they HAVE to be baited. "Layer 2: rock paper scissors layer" is like pausing the match and telling the person that didn't initiate the close quarters fight that they have been baited into something and now they HAVE to choose. As I said layer 2 has mind games present, but it has no free will or reaction present. Just because there are mind games does not mean there is not unavoidable luck.

The solution would be to take that part of the game out in some way. This could be accomplished by taking throw out, slowing the actions when close so people can fight off reaction and bait while even close, create a highest priority push away move that does no damage, or maybe even some other ways that I'm not thinking about.

To see just how flawed this layer 2 mechanic is try applying it to layer 1 distances as well. What has the game become at that point? An RPS simulator, no such thing as baiting at that point exists because one of the two players is forced to be baited for each percentage of damage of their life bar. That very lack of the choice to be baited or not to be baited introduces luck to the equation. For you to sit there and say it doesn't would be a lie.

@B N

Why are you bringing pausing into the equation? You used that in both examples countering Bob, and I really don't see the point you are getting at.

Also, I go back to my earlier statement of just because something doesn't make immediate sense, doesn't mean it's luck. Jeff hinted at the same thing.

Are you recommending taking out elements of SF to prevent the "unavoidable luck" you are describing? By your explanations, giving the user more choices of moves increases the unavoidable luck. But taking away features and gameplay elements so it becomes completely predictable with "only 1 way out" situations is just creating an instance of unavoidable circumstance and memorization of the one thing you have to do to get out of that situation. Which is already a major part of fighting games. But if you didn't do that 1 thing to get out of it, and I come in and perform my move and you take damage, you might think that I simply chose a better move and that I was lucky I chose what I did over you.

Using SF as an example can be bad. If we are talking about Turbo, and Akuma, then there are the obvious exploits. This is so early in overall fighting game development, before exploits were even known to exist, whereas now developers try really hard to find these exploits early. I would say that SF3 gives the user more options. You have the choice to block or parry, etc. Isn't there also a combo interrupt move already?

I haven't played enough SF recently to know how balanced it is, but I have played more Soul Calibur 4 recently. And there is a definite RPS element with throw, attack, parry.

In defense of B N, there can be an element of luck or chance to a specific moment in time where I have 1 of 2 choices, and my outcome depends on my opponents choice at that exact moment. There isn't any immediate reaction, but that is all in a split moment in time. In RPS, if you and I both throw 3 rocks in a row, I can't react while it is being thrown, but I can react to my past experiences for the 4th throw. But I don't think it ever goes beyond this one moment, and is more rare than common.

@ Austin Ivansmith

I introduce pauses because that is essentially what is happening any time the two players are close to each other. Both players know that when at that distance they're in a situation of rock paper scissors, and must do an action without knowing what their opponent might do. It isn't an actual pause by the game, but it most certainly is a pause in the mind of the player. At that distance it is unavoidable that you have to choose an action right at that moment and see if your action that you chose right at that moment beats the action that your opponent chose at that exact moment.

Also SF makes perfect sense to me. I understand the mechanics perfectly from blockstrings to frame data to baiting to mind games to spacing to zoning to move priority to invulnerable frames to LUCK. It isn't a matter of making immediate sense. It sounds like some people don't understand the mechanics though with how they are blindly responding. Your "why do you introduce pauses" statement showed me that you don't understand the mechanics.

By making this layer 2 game avoidable you are eliminating the unavoidable luck aspect of the game. Layer 1 has no unavoidable luck whatsoever so why not make the entire game layer 1 where all the other aspects of the game are still intact, but unavoidable luck is gone. The effect of this? The game would be more slow paced, but it would be fully skill-based.

So why am I even talking about all this here? It relates directly to the whole "Playing to Win" thing. I think this unavoidable luck aspect of the game is where the scrub players get frustrated with SF. There is no basis for a scrub player's complaints about "shooting hadokens over and over", but there most certainly is something to their complaints about "constant throwing". The hadoken situation is entirely avoidable while the constant throwing thing is not avoidable. Someone continues to shoot hadokens to try to bait you there is a way around it that is under your control 100% of the time. You simply jump straight up over the hadoken, you don't have to participate in their baiting if you don't want to. For the throwing example you cannot escape it 100% of the time, not even with practice, or strategy analysis. For the hadoken example you can escape it 100% of the time with practice and strategy analysis. If they try to throw you then you can reverse it, but if you try to reverse it and they didn't try to throw then you eat a combo. If you block then you eat the throw, but block the combo. This layer 2 play adds luck to the game because it is non-reactive and unavoidable. It is the only part of the game like that. A scrub player may know how to deal with it as best as they can, but they will never ever be able to deal with it 100% of the time in the right way no matter how much they practice. While unlikely that they'll be able to deal with other strategies the right way 100% of the time even with practice against someone of the same skill, it is not an impossibility for them to do so.

@Toby

I have to agree with the reading of Mark Rosewater's article, it is a great look into the different reasons why different people play games. There are several more articles on MtG Online of the same vein, and all of them are a good read, I also feel it's important to mention the article where he talks in depth about the subtypes/supertypes, Vorthos and Melvin;

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr278

B N, while you may be technically right (some might say that is the best kind of right) in saying that, taken in isolation, the moment where you choose to reverse a throw or block is pure luck, when you take that same moment within the context of a fight between two players then it becomes something more than luck:

I'm sure you understand that, just as in a real game of rock-paper-scissors, you can try to predict you opponents move. In fact, by reversing twice in previous situation you may be able to bait your opponent into thinking you will reverse again, and then instead you choose to do something else. But then a skilled opponent might predict you would try to do that and go for a throw the third time again.

Now when you win or lose a match like this you may say "You were lucky I didn't reverse that one", and that is of course true. On the other hand, your opponent could then reply "I knew you were going to block this time, because I kept punching you instead of throwing you throughout the match".

That's the mindgames eveybody mentions (but I'm sure you understand those very well), and that is the reason some people argue that even those rock-paper-scissor moments are not unavoidable luck as you call it, but rather skill and strategy.

Personally, when that type of situation arises when I play a fighting game I always enjoy it very much. It's nice to win because I beatifully parry a move and then counter with a devestating combo, but somehow it gets my adrenaline going more if the victory (or defeat) is based on a split-second mindgame decision. Mind you I only play fighting games for fun with friends, never for serious competition.

@ B N

To clarify, I made my "why do you introduce pauses" not because I don't understand the mechanics, but because your first introduction of these statements was confusing. Your response explained it better and I understand what you are trying to say now.

But I still think the "unavoidable luck" you are describing is in fact the skill of the game.

Using the example of Soul Calibur 4: attack beats throw, throw beats block, block beats attack (timing permitting.) Similar throw beats similar throw, similar attacks cancel out, etc. But, there are two kinds of throws, and to cancel out a throw you need to use the identical button input. But if you try the opposite throw, then the first persons throw wins out. Thus you have the unavoidable luck you are talking about, where you had a 50/50 choice and you chose wrong.

Now imagine you allowed the users to only have one kind of throw, and all throws are canceled out when a throw is countered with. This would potentially provide you with the ideal situation you are talking about, a 100% reactive way to encounter this situation. But truly skilled players would find themselves in a stalemate, always countering everything and being able to stop anything before it happens.

I guess for me and people like me, this is a major aspect of the game and it makes it very compelling. The same reason that I love to play RPS. Based on your description of unavoidable luck, I can't imagine a game which doesn't have it to some degree. I personally find it really fun and don't use it as an excuse for not being good at a game or not having fun, I don't need the game to hold my hand all the time and coddle my skill and ability.

Like I said before, I think you are looking at this through a microscope. I don't find it unfair that I chose "rock" instead of "scissors" and you beat me with "paper" because I wasn't reacting to what your hand was doing while you were throwing. But if you throw paper twice in a row, my next decision is reactive to your previous moves. I guess this is why fighting games have life meters and aren't one hit kills.

B N,

What you call “luck” in fighting games are merely the same variables that can and do affect the result of a real battle and therefore these games rely on the same strategy: the anticipation of your opponent’s next move. In a real battle, you cannot fully know what your opponent is going to do but a seasoned fighter can and will use various tactics to limit and in turn anticipate his opponent’s next attack. Just as in fighting games, a good fighter will use these tactics to control his opponent’s space and dictate the rules of the engagement to effectively limit if not outright nullify his opposition’s ability to counter attack or even mount a viable offensive.

What you refer to as “luck” in SF is anything but, because it takes a tremendous amount of skill to effectively strip away an opponent’s options, making their next move probable if not inevitable. When I use Guile and knock down a Ken who keeps spamming the HP Dragon Punch, I need only block because he will probably use the technique as a recovery move, meaning I can punish him with any of Guile’s various anti-air attacks. I achieve this not by luck but rather by studying my opponent and predicting his next attack. If my opponent is weak and hasn’t learned his lesson from previous mistakes, I’ll pound him again. If he’s adapted to my pattern of counter attack, he will smartly change up the recovery game.

Even during those split second moments you mention, there is always room for strategy and technique, however brief the window of opportunity may be. If a player using a certain character knows move X has priority over moves y and z, unleashing said move isn’t luck but rather the practiced, knowledgeable application of the tactics of the game. Consider for example that famous video of Daigo Umehara playing Street Fighter III where he literally parries his opponent’s Chun Li’s super multiple times, including an air parry, and then follows up with his own super attack to take the round. According to one top player, Diago actually had to begin the parry before his opponent actually unleashed the super because once the animation began, it would have been too late. That means he literally anticipated the technique and made the motion to counter it roughly at the same time as his opponent. That isn’t luck; that is the result of intuitive strategy and the true nature of fighting and counter-fighting.

Also, you seem to be very invested in the notion of the recovery game as proof of your thesis but the truth is that opting to attack an opponent as they recover is not the only viable option when playing SF competitively. This particular strategy, like others, carries with it a risk/reward ratio that can be exploited or left alone depending on the player and their strategy and style.

That isn’t to say chance doesn’t have some presence in these games but what you are implying, that chance comprises a large portion of the outcomes, is flatly wrong. For whatever reason, you are inflating the amount of influence chance or luck has within the Street Fighter paradigm and your “evidence” to support this theory is flimsy. For example, your outlining of the luck ratio based on that YouTube fight is hardly proof of anything. How can you presume to know what each player was thinking as each move was made? What might seem like dumb luck to a casual observer can just as likely be methodical strategy based on the constant study and anticipation of an opponent. Street Fighter is in many ways akin to a game of chess, requiring the best players to not merely respond to their opponents but to literally set up and force their opponent’s movements and then act accordingly. There is a measure of chance in any game of strategy or conflict, yet that measure of luck is infinitesimal when contrasted by the sheer amount of skill necessary to even get an opponent into a “check” position. Those situations you refer to, which you describe as guessing games, are anything but for the experienced player. The veteran player is doing very little guessing and rather forcing the scrub (for lack of a better term) to do all of the guessing, leaving certain movements to chance, which is why so often these inexperienced players find themselves decimated and humbled. Your mistake is thinking that such encounters are the result of luck when in most cases they are the direct outcome of carefully planned and implemented strategies.

The reality is that the paper-rock-scissors aspect of the game play, while present in some form in just about every competitive endeavor, is rarely if ever the deciding factor for the outcome of a match in any balanced fighter, Street Fighter included. Games like Virtua Fighter 5, Soul Caliber 4 and Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection can be played at insanely high levels of competition and the “luck” factor you keep droning on about has little if any effect on the outcome of those matches specifically because these games have been balanced to level the proverbial playing field as much as possible. When I tackle a character in Tekken using Marduck and I land one of his ground and pound maneuvers, that isn’t because of luck but rather because I know that most players will automatically go into a counter animation when tackled so I pause before launching my attack, securing the hit because I understand the deeper nuances of the game and have anticipated my opponent’s probable reaction.

You toss around the vernacular of this but genre but I sincerely doubt you have had much practical experience with the games you are deconstructing and this bleeds through in your posts. Your talk of the throw spamming in SF is flatly incorrect, especially considering that throws have a much larger input window and require more frames to execute than strikes, essentially giving the player ample opportunity to counter or even break a throw. While I’m not a highly ranked tournament fighter, I’ve been playing these games on a higher-than-average level for two decades and frankly, little of what you have stated meshes with my own real, practical experiences, which are considerable.

I guess what I find most offensive about your argument is that it effectively demeans and dismisses the effort and skill of players who have spent significant time mastering these games by suggesting that luck is a large component of their success. I play racquetball and one of the things I’ve noticed is that while the vast majority of the game is skill based, there is a small percentage of the game that relies on dumb luck, specifically how the ball lands, how it hits the wall, etc. By your logic, the actual percentage of that luck factor would be much higher and essentially render the sport largely a game of chance when in reality that chance is a minuscule variable when contrasted with the skill required to play the game well. There is an element of chance in all fighting games but your assertion that it’s a significant portion is woefully erroneous and belittles the talents of those who can consistently dominate even those players of comparable skill.

@ Bill Boggess

I'm going to keep it short because I have to go. I am not saying luck is a major part of the game as I showed in the video analysis, it's quite small, but it exists. I'm also not taking anything away from the pros because I realize that the game still takes a ton of skill to be at that level. I'm glad that you agree that "there is an element of chance in all fighting games", I've proven my point apparently. I don't assert that it is a significant portion of the game though. I only bring this up because I think it is possible to rid the entire game of luck/chance whatever you want to call it. By ridding the game of that small amount of luck you make it more accessible to "scrub" players.

I've interviewed Sirlin before, and perhaps his original essay doesn't address it, but he told me directly a number of things that actually agree with this article.

He does not believe in Playing to Win with every game you play. In fact, he suggests against it, since true Playing to Win requires so much time and effort that a player can only afford to do so on one or a couple of games at any given time. All other games he approaches as a casual player - both for a relaxing respite from the rigors of competitive play, and because he plays with friends that wouldn't enjoy getting destroyed.

This leads to an important distinction about rules.

A game is really only a set of rules. Players agree to these rules when they enter the game's "arena." If a scrub enters a public game and declares "No fair! That's cheap!" he is making a fool of himself, and this has an accepted precedent in history - nobody enters a sport and starts making up "fair" rules without the agreement of all involved.

Since a game is only a set of rules, and playing a game is two or more people accepting those rules in a kind of agreement, then the scrub is in fact not playing the same game as his opponent.

This all comes back to what the "game agreement" is. That's why, long ago, board game players established "House rules." Sirlin would never argue that "House Rules" are bad. If everyone agrees to the rules being played, then that's the game they are playing. That's how Sirlin plays when his non-pro Street Fighter playing friends come over.

But in the public arena - when a player goes online and starts playing an RTS game, he has agreed that his opponent may rush him in 5 minutes. If he doesn't want that, he can play a Custom game where that rule is enforced (a house rule).

Sirlin's overarching point is that it's perfectly fine to be a Scrub (despite the negative connotation to the word). Just realize when you are a Scrub, and that you have no right to complain when entering the public arena.

The inherent problem with entering a public game with the Scrub mentality - playing with "honor," playing by the Golden Rule - is that your perception of what's "fun" and what's "honorable" is unique. Every online game is rife with Scrubs that refuse to believe that's what they are - but the sad part is, each one of them does something that some other Scrub considers "cheap." That's where the Scrub's approach breaks down.

There's no such thing as "honor" in a public competition, simply because there's no objective definition of the word. For example, when I choose to Play to Win and use every "dirty trick" in the book, to me that's honorable because I am not "playing down" to my opponent. I am treating them with respect, assuming they deserve NOTHING LESS than my best play.

If Scrubs were taken seriously in a public competitive game, then Basketball players would never dunk because some guys who couldn't jump high enough would say "it's not fair." And the game would be less entertaining, and have fewer dimensions to the play.

You're confusing "uncertain" with "random."

I wonder how many people commenting on this article and talking about RPS and SF have actually read Sirlin's articles on game design (beyond simply "Playing to Win"). It's been at least a year since I did, but I still rather clearly recall that Sirlin did, in fact, denounce a pure RPS mechanic; that is, one where each choice offers equivalent results. Concerning close combat options in SF, the payout for each strategy is different; for the aggressor, winning by rock has a higher reward (does more damage) than winning by paper, and it is this incongruity that diminishes luck and enables mind games. It's no longer a question of "hm, which of these three functionally identical choices will my opponent choose?" but rather a deep (if infinitesimal) psychological analysis that elevates the game to a higher level.

That said, even a "pure" RPS mechanic isn't really luck, at least not after the initial encounter. "Luck" in a competitive game only exists when all players taking the exact same action in the exact same circumstances does not always produce the same result. For example, in a typical MMO, characters have some sort of to-hit statistic, a dodge statistic, and/or a damage range. When I tell my character to attack yours, I'm never certain of what is going to happen - and neither are you. Strategy is involved, to be sure, but that strategy consists of manipulating the situation as it evolves to gain a statistical advantage within the RNG -- if one of us gets a lucky hit, our approaches will probably be forced to change, and that's the appeal of the system. But it's still possible for the dice to simply roll well (or poorly, depending on which side you're on), which is addressed in game mechanics by calling for a high volume of rolls, making the statistical extremes less common.

But fighting games like SF and the others being discussed here are not luck games. The game engine is deterministic and contains no RNG; the outcome of the game is fully dependent on the actions of its players, which means that all wins or losses result from a failure either to anticipate the other's strategy or to execute your own effectively. Consequently, the only randomness in the game is introduced by other players.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I've only ever played video games at casual/social/explorational levels, never seriously competitive ones, so I reacted poorly to being called a "scrub" at first, too. But he's an extremely knowledgeable individual within his realm; you just have to keep in mind that he's describing a specific aspect to gaming, not all gaming.

B N,

Your Quote: "One of the problems with SF is the large amount of luck involved in the game."

You stated initially that luck was a major factor in the SF paradigm. Now you are saying it is considerably smaller, which I can somewhat agree with. However, my point is that the luck ratio is incredibly small to begin with and actually shrinks proportionally with the growing skill of the player. Much of what seems like luck to the inexperienced player will eventually reveal itself to be the product of skill, experience and the methodical application of solid strategies.

I actually think it is effectively impossible to remove all chance from fighting games simply because there are always situations were "luck" will factor in. Just as in real fighting, if two fighters rush in and commit to an attack, there is no possible way they can know what the other is going to use in that instant. That is why blindly rushing in for an attack is considered a high risk proposition. For example, even in a game as incredibly balanced as Virtua Fighter 5, if you approach a downed fighter and they opt to attack you from the prone position, you literally only have two viable choices in terms of defense: block high or block low. (Unless your character has a counter) That's basically a guessing game that yields a 50/50 probability that can only be exploited by anticipating your opponent's pattern. There really is no way to change those odds or the nature of that particular guessing game other than to choose not to engage the enemy on those terms.

That said, I think you have some keen observation skills and those types of skills when employed can help to make fighters better. I just don’t think it's possible to remove all elements of chance from fighters, though I'd gladly read any ideas you have on the subject.

Let me add a third class of players; the Elites.

When you play a competitive game, you play in a world with rules, principles or mechanics. If you don't master them, you are ruled by them and you need to get above them; master the controls, the maps ,the tricks, etc. However, people tends to forget the following; the conditions to victory aren't about the mechanics, but it's about who you are competing against.

It's about creating reactions, by mastering the game you become a Cause (part of the system) rather than an effect (trying to master the controls) so your ultimate goal is to create reactions from the part of your opponent. You make him move, you make him shot when you want it or align your enemies in sort that you eliminate 5 guys with 2 shotgun shots.

Whatever the game mechanics are, every competitive game is a "mind game" and to properly engage the players and give them enough reasons to play (or motivations), the game must be as fair and balance as possible.