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so this is pretty much the best page on the whole wiki --عبد الريحم بن حسين بن عبد الرحمن العراقي المصري‎ 16:16, 7 May 2011 (BST)

NOTICE

{{Merk[[File:[Example.jpg]]]2=X|OccFile:Ryu-sf4kupation1=X|Occupation2=X|Occupation3=X|Occupation4=X|Occupation5=X}} Becoming the Champion

by David Sirlin

Dedicated to winners and those who strive to win.

   It cannot be found by seeking, but only seekers shall find it. 
   —Sufi Proverb

Imagine a majestic mountain nirvana of gaming. At its peak are fulfillment, “fun,” and even transcendence. Most people could care less about this mountain peak because they have other life issues that are more important to them, and other peaks to pursue. There are a few, though, who are not at this peak, but who would be very happy there. These are the people I’m talking to with this book. Some of them don’t need any help; they’re on the journey. Most, though, only believe they are on that journey but actually are not. They got stuck in a chasm at the mountain’s base, a land of scrubdom. Here they are imprisoned in their own mental constructs of made-up game rules. If they could only cross this chasm, they would discover either a very boring plateau (for a degenerate game) or the heavenly enchanted mountain peak (for a “deep” game). In the former case, crossing the chasm would teach them to find a different mountain with more fulfilling rewards. In the latter case, well, they’d just be happier. “Playing to win” is largely the process of shedding the mental constructs that trap players in the chasm who would be happier at the mountain peak.

A lot of people get rubbed the wrong way by this stuff because they think I want to apply “playing to win” to everyone. I don’t. It’s not that I think everyone should be on this particular peak or that everyone would even want to be. There are other peaks in life, probably better ones. But those who are stuck in the chasm really should know their positions and how to reach a happier place.

Then, there is the age-old question of how much, if any of this, applies to real life. I start out by defining the big differences between real life and games: games are sharply defined by rules; life is not. Exploring extreme “corner cases” of a game is what high-level play is about. Exploring extreme situations in life can easily be socially unacceptable, morally wrong, and illegal. Competitive games require military virtues: immediacy, emergency tactics, and the end (winning) justifies the means (as long as it’s through moves the game defines as legal). Real life requires civic virtues like kindness, understanding, justice, and mercy.

And yet Playing to Win has valuable life lessons to teach that go beyond the scope of games. Before we’re ready to talk about that, though, it’s time to start winning.

Introduction

I am here to teach you to win.

Playing to win is the most important and most widely misunderstood concept in all of competitive games. The sad irony is that those who do not already understand the implications I will spell out will probably not believe them to be true at all. In fact, if I were to send this book back in time to my earlier self, even I would have trouble with it. Apparently, these concepts are something one must come to learn through experience, though I hope at least some of you will take my word for it.

   Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
   —Douglas Adams,
   Last Chance to See

Why Win at Games?

The great thing about competitive, zero-sum games is that they offer an objective measure of your progress. When you walk the path of continuous self-improvement that a champion must walk, you have a guide. If you are able to win more (that is, more consistently defeat highly skilled players), then you are improving. If not, then not. Imagine trying to measure your success in other forms of life such as your personal life or career. Are you improving or not? To answer that, you have to know exactly what is included within the scope of the “game” and what is not. What are all the factors that go into your professional life? It’s very hard to answer. Even if you did have an answer and created a measure of your progress, others would not agree on your standards. Not to say that the opinion of others is important in your measure of success, but the opinion of others does “keep you honest.” Left to your own definitions, you could (and perhaps subconsciously would) define the scope of your game in a contrived way so as to appear to be doing well at it (or poorly at it). It would just be an exercise in determining whether you are an optimistic or a pessimistic person.

Games are different. The very nature of a game is that it is a collection of rules agreed upon by all players. If players don’t agree on the rules, then they are not even playing the same game. The rules define exactly what is inside the game and what is outside. The rules define which moves are legal and which moves are not. The rules define what constitutes winning, what constitutes losing, and what constitutes a draw. There’s no weaseling out of defeat by redefining what the game is. The game should need no redefining, and a loss is a loss.

In pursing the path of winning, you are likely to learn that concentrating merely on beating the opponent is not enough. In the long run, you will have to improve yourself always, or you will be surpassed. The actual conflict appears to be between you and the opponents, but the best way to win is to bring to the table a mastery of playing to win and a mastery of the game at hand. These things are developed within you and are revealed to others only during conflict.

   You never truly know a man . . . until you fight him.
   —Seraph, The Matrix: Reloaded

Do You Want to Win?

Before we go on, ask yourself if you really want to win. Most people answer that they do, but they fail to consider that winning takes more than wanting. It takes commitment, extended effort, discipline, and time. It is not for everyone, nor should it be. There are a great many things to be in life other than a champion at competitive games. If your interest lies in other places, I suggest you not continue with this book as it will only upset you. Think carefully if you only say in passing that you want to win, or if you deeply desire to and are prepared to make the sacrifices required. Being a fine chef, a good mother, a doctor, a political activist, or a musician are all noble pursuits that may, due to your finite time and effort, prevent you from focusing on something as trivial as winning games. I am not advising you to play to win, but I am here for you if you do.

There are also those who play games for something known as “fun.” That subject will not be covered here. I believe there is a great deal more of this “fun” to be had while playing to win than while only playing casually, but there is no use in entering that debate now. This “fun” is a subjective thing, hard to pin down, but winning is not. That’s what we have on our side: winning is clear and absolute. When you are playing to win, you have a perfectly clear goal and an objective measure of your progress. Is the master chef really the best in his field? Who can say without bias? The situation is different for the competitive gamer: either he can consistently defeat all of his opponents—or he cannot.

The principles of winning apply equally to all zero-sum competitive games. No matter the game, you must create an environment in which you can improve. You must practice against a wide range of opponents. You must free your mind from self-imposed rules that prevent you from winning. You must develop “mental toughness” and the ability to read the minds of your opponents. You must interact with a community of other players. Whether you play chess, tennis, Quake, Mario Kart, Street Fighter, or poker, the lessons are all the same.

Gaming as a Conversation

Let us look at what it is like to play competitively. A competitive game, to me, is a debate. You argue your points with your opponent, and he argues his. “I think this series of moves is optimal,” you say, and he retorts, “Not when you take this into account.” Debates in real life are highly subjective, but in games we can be absolutely sure who the winner is.

The conflict is between the players; the game itself is merely the medium—the language—of the debate. The game must be expressive enough to allow the debaters to articulate complex thoughts. A skilled debater knows the nuances of the language and common tricks and traps of language he can use against untested opponents, but the language is only his tool. Once he learns the theory of debate, he can apply it to any language. It is common to focus entirely on learning nuances of a language at the expense of gaining a real understanding of how debate should be conducted. Expert debate involves gaining an understanding of the opponent and what he will say, and knowing immediately what you will say back. It involves deception and boldness, risk-taking and conservatism. If you learn to debate (play to win), then learning particular languages (games) become simple in comparison.

A few paragraphs ago I said I would not cover the topic of “fun” in games, but you must learn not to be caught off guard by the unexpected, so the introduction of this book is as good a place as any to throw an early curve ball. The “fun” of the great debate, at least to me, occurs when you push the opponent by arguing your point, then that opponent is able to push back forcefully, yet you are able to withstand this thrust. If you can simply push the opponent over in any of a dozen ways of your choosing, there is no debate to be had. If after your simplest preliminary argument, the opponent can push you over, at least you had a taste of his prowess, but again, there was no real debate to be had. Only when you can each respond to the other’s points and keep a meaningful debate going is there anything truly interesting going on. I would call this “fun.”

Before we get on to winning games, I want to make sure you know how to play them at all. Let’s make sure you have a game, an environment in which to play it, access to opponents, and an understanding of how to gain basic proficiency.

Choice of Game

You first need to choose a game to play. You probably already have a game in mind, and it might not have occurred to you to try to win at other games. Different games require different skills, and it is not always clear to the beginner or even the intermediate which skills a particular game really demands. It’s best, of course, to play a game you are well suited to play.

I recommend a game that allows all players to start with equal materials and advantages. For example, a fighting game allows players to start with different characters, but all players are free to choose any character they like before the match begins. Magic: The Gathering is a card game that allows players to bring different decks to a tournament, but assuming all players have equal access to all cards beforehand (which you must assume at the tournament level of play), then anyone could have brought any deck. But games based on “leveling up” a character such as many massively multiplayer games allow one player to have material advantage at the beginning of a “match” merely because he put in more time than the other player. Seek out games that do not artificially stack the deck, but instead reward only the player-skill that one takes into a game.

Don’t choose every game. Although it’s noble to believe you will simply “play to win” at all games you encounter, it’s better to be realistic. Choose one or two games at most unless you have both an exceptional amount of free time and gaming skill. For example, if your focus is on a particular first-person shooter game, you might dabble with or even be expert at other games in that genre. You might also play the occasional game of Scrabble with your girlfriend, Texas Hold’em poker with the guys, and Magic: The Gathering here and there. To even attempt to truly win at any one of those games is a full-time job. You might not be aware of international Scrabble tournaments, the World Poker Tour, or Magic’s Pro Tour, but every one of those games has a world class following of players. Competing at a high level in just one game is a daunting task.

You should recognize the level of commitment you are willing to live with for a particular game, and be content with it. There are a few games I take very seriously, and the rest I simply enjoy as much as I can with my limited commitment. For example, I have read many books on chess and played chess occasionally over the years. On the whole though, I am a terrible player. During a game of chess, I do everything I can (within the scope of the game) to win, but I do very little to improve myself over the long haul. I am not a member of the chess community, I do not seek out superior chess players as mentors, and I do not even seek out the readily available wealth of opponents free to play on the internet. In a very limited way (during a particular game only), I “play to win,” but the whole endeavor of chess playing is an occasional “fun” activity for me, not a serious attempt to dominate the chess world. I’m comfortable with that, because I realize I can only dominate so many worlds.

Even so, I’ve invested quite a bit of mental resources on chess compared to other games. I used to play a few games of Boggle per week, and again, I tried to win those games, but I did absolutely nothing outside the games to improve. I was comfortable with that because any time I might have spent improving at Boggle was better spent improving at games I took more seriously.

Anyway, back to choosing your game. Another factor is a game’s ability to hold together at high levels of play. Many games degenerate when played at high levels of skill, and many other games only appear to degenerate but actually don’t. If you choose a mature game such as chess, you can be assured of some real gameplay at high levels, but newer games are a gamble. This may seem like a minor issue now, but whether a game breaks down as you increase in skill is, in fact, a major issue. I would even say that most serious players of most games will reach a point where they feel that their game breaks down and no longer requires any real strategy. Often, this is when they have discovered some powerful tactic that seems to have no real counter, thus removing any strategic thought from the game. I would also go so far as to say that most of the time, the player will be wrong and there will exist either counters to the tactic or far better tactics, and that the game does indeed have more depth left to it. Sometimes though, there is no more depth and the player is right. Unfortunately, this looks suspiciously like the case where the player is wrong. It will take some wisdom to know whether you should continue with a degenerate game in order to discover its further depth or whether to abandon it in favor of a better game.

This is all too much to think about now, but beware that if your competitive game of choice is not an old and mature one, you will probably face this issue.

Environment

Creating an environment for yourself to play your game is vitally important. The champion is forged in fire, not in a vacuum. You need physical access to the game and access to a variety of opponents. It helps greatly to have friends who are players of the same game or to make friends who play it. If you truly walk the path of the champion, you will eventually find yourself closely involved with the community of players who play your game. The sooner you can become connected to this community, the better. They have a great deal of knowledge about the game and about tournaments and events surrounding it. You will find keepers of secret knowledge about your game, and you will find the very best players of the game as you approach the inner circles of the game’s community.

Having physical access to your game cannot be stressed enough. If it is a video arcade game, you must live or work or go to school near an appropriate arcade. (By the time this is published, you can read about what an “arcade” is in a history book.) If it’s a PC game, you must have ready access to an internet PC. If it’s poker, you must have easy access to a card house where poker is played. If your game can be played remotely (over the internet), then you have the potential, at least, to play a very wide range of opponents, assuming you prove you are worthy to play them. If your game requires face-to-face opponents, you are well advised to live in a city where the best players of that game live, if possible. If this is not possible, you must realize that the players who do have access to the elite experts of the game have an advantage over you. If you don’t have access to expert players face-to-face where you live, you might consider choosing a different game to win at.

Another thing you will need is a lifestyle that will allow you to devote the time, money, and mental energy to playing your game. Since this is significant, you are well advised to play a game you find “fun” or at least to find “fun” in the competition or personal challenge of improving because building your life around a game that feels like “work” is a mistake. Building your life around any game is arguably a mistake, but I’ll pretend to ignore that point, as it sure helps when it comes to winning.

Basic Proficiency

Your first aim should be to learn the rules of the game, how to perform basic actions and moves in the game, to understand which legal moves are available to you, and of course the conditions required to win and lose the game. At this stage you should also try to learn the lingo used by other players and you should become comfortable performing basic moves. In some games, it will take quite some time to overcome the feeling of awkwardness of a beginner.

Note that none of these tasks strictly require an expert player to aid you. You can read rulebooks and FAQs, and simply play. An expert player serving as a mentor (not yet an opponent) is extremely helpful though. Either he can teach you the lingo and basics or, if you already know this, he can explain how the game is really played. It can also be very useful to watch expert players play each other at this stage (either in person or from recordings), but playing against them directly might be overwhelming; it depends how proficient you are in your beginner stage. Watching expert or intermediate players will also reveal “bread and butter” tactics that you will need to learn, and probably a lot of other things that are over your head for now.

Once you have done the above and understand the basics of the game, the next task is to learn a few “bread and butter” tactics of your own. You should learn effective, easy to execute sequences of moves that give you a shot at winning. The goal isn’t to develop new sequences that have never before been seen; the goal is to be effective. When an opponent plays extremely poorly, you should at least have some idea about what you are supposed to do to seize the game from him. Depending on the game, there may be different “bread and butter” tactics to move you toward winning and to actually seal the game with a win. Also depending on the game, you may need to practice executing these tactics outside of the chaos of a real game. If even the basic tactics require a great deal of practice, then attempt to develop these skills as quickly as possible in a controlled environment. Do not dwell too long on isolated, laboratory practicing at this point though, because you need to dive into real games.

I know some players who, even at this early stage, wish to play only against expert players. I personally prefer to play against average and poor players for a bit, as a way to hone my skills of attacking efficiently. I think the important thing at this stage is simply to play as much as possible, regardless of the skill of your opponents. Familiarization with the game is paramount.

When you do play against experts, they will probably beat you badly. Playing them will teach you what not to do. Do this, and they punish you horribly. Do that, and the game is lost. Playing them will teach you which moves are “unsafe” or “terrible,” and you must learn to make fewer and fewer of these moves that will lose you the game. Of course, if all you do is remove moves from your repertoire, you are playing a safer game that is less likely to be lost at any moment, but you also must make moves to win! You should be making good progress on not losing so quickly when you play these experts, but how can you learn to win? Watch what the experts do to you. They are likely extremely efficient at stealing a game. When you make a mistake, watch exactly how they punish you. Watch exactly which sequence they use to end the game.

Again, some of my friends swear by only playing against experts, and there is surely much to be learned from that. But once you have learned how the experts win, it can be very difficult to practice those maneuvers against them. The opportunity to exercise your winning muscles will show itself only rarely. It is at this point that I prefer to play against weaker players. The weaker players will present plenty of opportunities for you to practice your endgame skills. You can try variations on your attack patterns all day on them. You can hone your skills at ending a game. Often, attacking patterns will leave you vulnerable, so practice until your attack sequences leave no gaps of vulnerability. You won’t truly know if you’ve accomplished this until you play against the experts later, though.

The idea is to use the beginners as a way to get an extraordinary amount of practice in the tactics that win the game in a short amount of time. The experts rarely allow such situations to arise, but when they do, you will need to capitalize on them professionally. When the opponent makes a fatal mistake, you need to be able to confidently take control of the game and win it. This act must be natural, something you’ve done a thousand times before. When the rare opportunity to win presents itself while playing the expert, you shouldn’t have to think “I’m pretty sure I can win this in theory. The textbooks say I should do X.” You should take control of the game simply, quickly, and instinctively, just as you have done countless times against the beginners.

The experts keep you honest. They remind you, “That was not a safe move. You cannot trick me with that. That will not stop my advances.” The expert also teaches you how to win, but presents only very few opportunities to practice winning. The beginner, on the other hand, will let you practice winning until it’s second nature. At that time, you must return to the experts.

There will soon come a time when beginners and even intermediate players are of very little use to you. They do not know how to punish your mistakes properly, so you can develop bad habits. They fall for tricks that are not “real,” meaning that experts would never fall from them. And perhaps worst of all, they often defeat themselves. If you play safely for long enough against beginners or intermediates, they are likely to eventually make a mistake that gives you the win. It might teach you that long, drawn-out conservative play is the road to victory. But what will you do when the expert never hands you the game? What if the opponent is good enough that you must actively beat him rather than wait for him to beat himself? This is why you must focus all of your attention on playing experts when you are ready. So far you have learned only obvious and mundane things. I know that taking the first step can be the hardest part of the journey, so I wanted to coddle you a little just to get you going. The coddling stops here. You must now understand the cold, hard truth of competition. This is the difficult part to accept. This is the part that will upset you. You will have many defense mechanisms that will tell you that I am wrong, but I assure you with certainty that on this point I am delivering divine truth directly to you. Introducing...the Scrub

The derogatory term “scrub” means several different things. One definition is someone (especially a game player) who is not good at something (especially a game). By this definition, we all start out as scrubs, and there is certainly no shame in that. I mean the term differently, though. A scrub is a player who is handicapped by self-imposed rules that the game knows nothing about. A scrub does not play to win.

Now, everyone begins as a poor player—it takes time to learn a game to get to a point where you know what you’re doing. There is the mistaken notion, though, that by merely continuing to play or “learn” the game, one can become a top player. In reality, the “scrub” has many more mental obstacles to overcome than anything actually going on during the game. The scrub has lost the game even before it starts. He’s lost the game even before deciding which game to play. His problem? He does not play to win.

The scrub would take great issue with this statement for he usually believes that he is playing to win, but he is bound up by an intricate construct of fictitious rules that prevents him from ever truly competing. These made-up rules vary from game to game, of course, but their character remains constant. Let’s take a fighting game off of which I’ve made my gaming career: Street Fighter.

In Street Fighter, the scrub labels a wide variety of tactics and situations “cheap.” This “cheapness” is truly the mantra of the scrub. Performing a throw on someone is often called cheap. A throw is a special kind of move that grabs an opponent and damages him, even when the opponent is defending against all other kinds of attacks. The entire purpose of the throw is to be able to damage an opponent who sits and blocks and doesn’t attack. As far as the game is concerned, throwing is an integral part of the design—it’s meant to be there—yet the scrub has constructed his own set of principles in his mind that state he should be totally impervious to all attacks while blocking. The scrub thinks of blocking as a kind of magic shield that will protect him indefinitely. Why? Exploring the reasoning is futile since the notion is ridiculous from the start.

You will not see a classic scrub throw his opponent five times in a row. But why not? What if doing so is strategically the sequence of moves that optimizes his chances of winning? Here we’ve encountered our first clash: the scrub is only willing to play to win within his own made-up mental set of rules. These rules can be staggeringly arbitrary. If you beat a scrub by throwing projectile attacks at him, keeping your distance and preventing him from getting near you—that’s cheap. If you throw him repeatedly, that’s cheap, too. We’ve covered that one. If you block for fifty seconds doing no moves, that’s cheap. Nearly anything you do that ends up making you win is a prime candidate for being called cheap. Street Fighter was just one example; I could have picked any competitive game at all.

Doing one move or sequence over and over and over is a tactic close to my heart that often elicits the call of the scrub. This goes right to the heart of the matter: why can the scrub not defeat something so obvious and telegraphed as a single move done over and over? Is he such a poor player that he can’t counter that move? And if the move is, for whatever reason, extremely difficult to counter, then wouldn’t I be a fool for not using that move? The first step in becoming a top player is the realization that playing to win means doing whatever most increases your chances of winning. That is true by definition of playing to win. The game knows no rules of “honor” or of “cheapness.” The game only knows winning and losing.

A common call of the scrub is to cry that the kind of play in which one tries to win at all costs is “boring” or “not fun.” Who knows what objective the scrub has, but we know his objective is not truly to win. Yours is. Your objective is good and right and true, and let no one tell you otherwise. You have the power to dispatch those who would tell you otherwise, anyway. Simply beat them.

Let’s consider two groups of players: a group of good players and a group of scrubs. The scrubs will play “for fun” and not explore the extremities of the game. They won’t find the most effective tactics and abuse them mercilessly. The good players will. The good players will find incredibly overpowering tactics and patterns. As they play the game more, they’ll be forced to find counters to those tactics. The vast majority of tactics that at first appear unbeatable end up having counters, though they are often quite subtle and difficult to discover. Knowing the counter tactic prevents the other player from using his tactic, but he can then use a counter to your counter. You are now afraid to use your counter and the opponent can go back to sneaking in the original overpowering tactic. This concept will be covered in much more detail later.

The good players are reaching higher and higher levels of play. They found the “cheap stuff” and abused it. They know how to stop the cheap stuff. They know how to stop the other guy from stopping it so they can keep doing it. And as is quite common in competitive games, many new tactics will later be discovered that make the original cheap tactic look wholesome and fair. Often in fighting games, one character will have something so good it’s unfair. Fine, let him have that. As time goes on, it will be discovered that other characters have even more powerful and unfair tactics. Each player will attempt to steer the game in the direction of his own advantages, much how grandmaster chess players attempt to steer opponents into situations in which their opponents are weak.

Let’s return to the group of scrubs. They don’t know the first thing about all the depth I’ve been talking about. Their argument is basically that ignorantly mashing buttons with little regard to actual strategy is more “fun.” Superficially, their argument does at least look valid, since often their games will be more “wet and wild” than games between the experts, which are usually more controlled and refined. But any close examination will reveal that the experts are having a great deal of this “fun” on a higher level than the scrub can even imagine. Throwing together some circus act of a win isn’t nearly as satisfying as reading your opponent’s mind to such a degree that you can counter his every move, even his every counter.

Can you imagine what will happen when the two groups of players meet? The experts will absolutely destroy the scrubs with any number of tactics they’ve either never seen or never been truly forced to counter. This is because the scrubs have not been playing the same game. The experts were playing the actual game while the scrubs were playing their own homemade variant with restricting, unwritten rules.

The scrub has still more crutches. He talks a great deal about “skill” and how he has skill whereas other players—very much including the ones who beat him flat out—do not have skill. The confusion here is what “skill” actually is. In Street Fighter, scrubs often cling to combos as a measure of skill. A combo is a sequence of moves that is unblockable if the first move hits. Combos can be very elaborate and very difficult to pull off. But single moves can also take “skill,” according to the scrub. The “dragon punch” or “uppercut” in Street Fighter is performed by holding the joystick toward the opponent, then down, then diagonally down and toward as the player presses a punch button. This movement must be completed within a fraction of a second, and though there is leeway, it must be executed fairly accurately. Ask any scrub and they will tell you that a dragon punch is a “skill move.”

I once played a scrub who was actually quite good. That is, he knew the rules of the game well, he knew the character matchups well, and he knew what to do in most situations. But his web of mental rules kept him from truly playing to win. He cried cheap as I beat him with “no skill moves” while he performed many difficult dragon punches. He cried cheap when I threw him five times in a row asking, “Is that all you know how to do? Throw?” I gave him the best advice he could ever hear. I told him, “Play to win, not to do ‘difficult moves.’” This was a big moment in that scrub’s life. He could either ignore his losses and continue living in his mental prison or analyze why he lost, shed his rules, and reach the next level of play.

I’ve never been to a tournament where there was a prize for the winner and another prize for the player who did many difficult moves. I’ve also never seen a prize for a player who played “in an innovative way.” (Though chess tournaments do sometimes have prizes for “brilliancies,” moves that are strokes of genius.) Many scrubs have strong ties to “innovation.” They say, “That guy didn’t do anything new, so he is no good.” Or “person X invented that technique and person Y just stole it.” Well, person Y might be one hundred times better than person X, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the scrub. When person Y wins the tournament and person X is a forgotten footnote, what will the scrub say? That person Y has “no skill” of course.

You can gain some standing in a gaming community by playing in an innovative way, but that should not be the ultimate goal. Innovation is merely one of many tools that may or may not help you reach victory. The goal is to play as excellently as possible. The goal is to win.

Losing is part of the game. If you never lose, you are never truly tested, and never forced to grow. A loss is an opportunity to learn. But losing can be upsetting, and can cause emotions to take the place of logical thinking. Below are some common “losing attitudes.” If you find yourself saying these things, consider it a red flag.

“At least I have my Code of Honor,” a.k.a. “You are cheap!”

This is by far the most common call of the scrub, and I’ve already described it in detail. The loser usually takes the imagined moral high ground by sticking to his Code of Honor, a made-up set of personal rules that tells him which moves he can and cannot do. Of course, the rules of the game itself dictate which moves a player can and cannot make, so the Code of Honor is superfluous and counterproductive toward winning. This can also take the form of the loser complaining that you have broken his Code of Honor. He will almost always assume the entire world agrees on his Code and that only the most vile social outcasts would ever break his rules. It can be difficult to even reason with the kind of religious fervor some players have toward their Code. This type of player is trying desperately to remain a “winner” any way possible. If you catch him amidst a sea of losses, you’ll notice that his Code will undergo strange contortions so that he may still define himself, somehow, as a “winner.”

“I lost to a scrub!”

This is the most entertaining complaint of the bunch. When this player loses to someone he considers a weaker player, the “I lost to a scrub!” line is sometimes used as an excuse. This player is saying that he is very good at the game, and losing to such a poor player doesn’t prove anything. He often enumerates all the weaknesses of this “poor player,” including such gems as “he relies on only one tactic” and “his mind games are weak.” The more he puts down the other player, though, the worse he looks himself. If the other player relies on only one tactic, and you can’t beat it, then what does that say about you?

This need to displace the blame is probably motivated by pride, but it deprives you of a chance to learn from your mistakes (and it alienates other players, a point which you may or may not care about). Basically, you need to have some respect for other players who have the power to win, no matter what faults you may see with their play styles. Sometimes, these “weaker players” really are better than you, and you just aren’t admitting it. And if they aren’t better, then you should not let them win. You should be recognizing and learning from your own mistakes, or you should be improving to catch up to them. Either way, the heart of the issue lies in you, not in the player you just lost to.

“I suck, why even try?”

This is the opposite of the above statement: underconfidence rather than overconfidence. Sometimes this line is said in sadness after a loss, which is somewhat understandable. In that case, just stick in there and keep trying. The real crime, though, is when this is said before or even during the match. A low self-esteem can be debilitating. Some players get thrown off by a past loss or other bad event in real life. They then take a losing attitude into the game, even in cases where they objectively have an advantage in the match (such as a better deck in Magic: The Gathering or a favorable character matchup in a fighting game). This type of player needs to put all that out of his mind and focus on the immediate match. If you do have some advantage going into the game in your choice of character/side/deck, general play skills, or specific knowledge, then that’s what you should be focusing on. And if you don’t have any of that, that’s all the more reason to work harder, be smarter, triumph against the odds, and show the naysayers how wrong they all are. Self-doubt does not win games; positivity does.

“This game is dumb / too random / too boring.”

In all fairness, sometimes the game is dumb or too random or too boring. In that case, you should stop playing it altogether and find something better to do with your time. But these claims are often made against perfectly good games. For the “dumb” game, there might be another level of understanding above your own that makes the game brilliant.

The “too random” game is a bit trickier. On the one hand, the more random a game is, the worse it probably is for serious competitive play. But randomness can add “fun” to a game. Usually, though, there is only one meaningful way to answer this complaint: examine whether the same players can consistently win at it. One could make a strong argument that the card game Magic: The Gathering is “too random,” yet the same players are able to win national and international tournaments over and over. Kai Budde, the best player in the world as of this writing, routinely shows up to tournaments with the exact same deck as his teammates—yet Kai wins. Apparently the game isn’t “too random.”

The same could be said of poker. Even though randomness plays a large part in an individual hand, the same top players emerge with the most money over the course of several tournaments.

The “too boring” comment is always an easy way out. Basically, all these complaints are about shifting the blame over losing away from yourself and toward supposed deficiencies in the game itself. Again, sometimes the game deserves to be criticized, but be aware that these complaints are often just excuses that allow you to shrug off a loss rather than actually learn from it.

Catch yourself if you start to fall into any of these losing attitudes and take responsibility for your losses. Only the loser plays the part of the victim. The winner takes charge and actively seeks out improvement.

Video games, like all software, have bugs. Even non-computerized games can have interactions the designers did not intend. If an expert does anything he can to win, then does he exploit bugs in the game? The answer is a resounding yes. The player cannot be bothered to interpret the will of the game designer as far as which moves are “fair” and which moves are not, or which moves were intended and which moves weren’t. It’s irrelevant anyway. The player knows only moves that lead to winning and moves that don’t.

Mysteriously, some games do expect the player to divine the will of the designer, and expect him to adhere to a set of behavioral rules on top of the actual rules of the game. This is the fundamentally flawed concept embraced by most massively-multiplayer online games. Consider World of Warcraft as an example. In a town, you can go on rooftops and you can fight against other players, but you can’t fight other players while on rooftops, or you’ll receive a warning. (Actually, this was totally legal before 3/11/2005 at 9:44 PM PST, but not legal after.) You can kill the same monster all day every day to “farm” in-game money for yourself (in fact you practically have to), but you can’t farm “too much” or you’re labeled as a gold-farmer and banned. If you break your line of sight with a monster, he often has trouble getting to you, which allows your friends to kill him much more easily. Smart play or grounds for suspension? Answer: grounds for suspension. If a monster is chasing you, you can go into a lake where he can’t follow and wait for him to give up. Smart play or grounds for suspension? Answer: that one’s smart play. The complex web of made-up rules is not unlike the shackling self-imposed rulebook of the scrub.

I’m here to tell you that legitimate competitive games are not like this. Reasonable games have built-in rules and simply do not allow illegal moves to happen in the first place. Tournaments for reasonable games sometimes have to impose extra rules, but they keep this list as clear and as short as possible. There are games that are just for “fun,” because you can’t “win” them or make reasonable tournaments out of them. These games—while interesting—are not within the scope of this book.

So what lengths should a player go to in order to win? A player should use any tournament legal move available to him that maximizes his chances of winning the game. Whether certain moves or tactics should be legal in a tournament is a totally separate issue that we’ll get to later. For now, the issue at hand is that if it’s legal in a tournament, it’s part of the game, period. Players often fault other players for “cheating” or playing “dishonestly” when they use tactics that should not be allowed in a tournament, often because they are exploits of bugs. The player is never at fault. The player is merely trying to win with all tools available to him and should not be expected to pull his punches. Complaints should be taken up with the governing body of the tournament (or the community of players) as to what should be allowed in a tournament. This is a dead simple issue that confuses too many players. Now this is a tricky subject, not nearly so clear-cut as the last. The world is full of players who think everything under the sun should be banned. The scrub believes that any tactic or maneuver that beats him should be labeled “cheap” and consequently banned. In actuality, very little ever needs to be banned.

Before we discuss what should or should not be allowed in tournament play, I should acknowledge that different forms of distribution of games have led to different attitudes about banning. Some types of games are released, and that’s that. The players are stuck with whatever is in the game. Other types of games see a patch or two to fix the most egregious bugs and perhaps game balance problems. I’ll lump these two into the same category though as they both basically stick the player with whatever is there after the last patch. These are the types of games I grew up with.

Internet gaming has introduced a different type of game. Blizzard (makers of StarCraft, Warcraft 3, Diablo, and World of Warcraft) is a special game developer that provides a free matchmaking service called battle.net for many of its games. Since all of its multiplayer competitive games are played over this service, Blizzard can (and does) gather an incredible amount of data about how the games are played, how quickly they end, which tactics are successful, which maps are played, etc. They continue to balance their games though new patches years after release.

So-called massively multiplayer games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, though not zero-sum competitive games, are also constantly monitored and patched by their developers. Players currently pay a monthly fee to play these types of games and thereby financially support large development teams who constantly improve and tweak the game.

The entire notion of radically patching and altering a game after its release may have many desirable properties, but it also has created an attitude among developers that they can release a somewhat buggy and imbalanced game and just patch it later. It is no surprise then that players of this type of game see differently than players of more “static” games on the issue of banning and altering a game. To players of my kind of games, banning is an ultra-extreme measure. To players of some internet games, the changing of game balance can be an everyday occurrence, as can the fixing of bugs.

The “constant patching” approach by developers also often leads to laziness on the part of the players; there’s less reward for trying as hard as you can within the given rules, because if you are successful, your tactic will just be patched into obsolescence anyway. You might be a footnote someplace, but you won’t still be winning. It gets worse in most massively multiplayer games, where you can actually be banned—permanently—for playing within the rules they created, but playing in a way they had not intended.

Criteria of a Ban

A ban must be enforceable, discrete, and warranted.

Enforceable

Sometimes, a tactic can be hard to detect. If you can’t reliably detect something, you certainly can’t enforce penalties on it. In a fighting game, a trick might make a move invulnerable that shouldn’t be, but actually detecting every time the trick is used might be nearly impossible. Or consider a real-time strategy game, where a trick might give your units a few more hit points than normal, but again, detecting this might be nearly impossible in a real game. If something is to be banned from tournament play, it must be reasonably easy to identify when it happens or to prevent it from ever happening at all.

Also in a fighting game, a move might be “unfairly” unblockable, but only when that move is executed in a certain situation with precise 1/60th of a second timing. Did the player execute it during that “unfair” time window? Or 1/60th of a second late? Perhaps he accidentally executed the move at the unfair time through sheer luck. Is he to be penalized? Imagine trying to enforce a rule that states “You may usually use move X, but there’s 1/60th of a second where you may not use move X.”

Discrete

The thing to be banned must be able to be “completely defined.” Imagine that in a fighting game, repeating a certain sequence of five moves over and over is the best tactic in the game. Further suppose that doing so is “taboo” and that players want to ban it. There is no concrete definition of exactly what must be banned. Can players do three repetitions of the five moves? What about two reps? What about one? What about repeating the first four moves and omitting the fifth? Is that okay? The game becomes a test of who is willing to play as closely as possible to the “taboo tactic” without breaking the (arbitrary) letter of the law defining the tactic.

Or in a first-person shooter game, consider the notion of banning “camping” (sitting in one place for too long). No friendly agreement between the players is necessary for the ban, which at least means it’s enforceable. The server can monitor the positions of players, and it knows exactly who breaks the rule and can hand out penalties accordingly. The ban is enforceable, but the problem is being able to completely define camping. If camping is defined as staying within one zone for 3 minutes, and if it really is the best tactic, then sitting in that zone for 2 minutes 59 seconds becomes the best tactic. It’s a slippery slope because there will always exist camping tactics arbitrarily close to the specific kind of camping that is banned.

Here’s an example of a completely defined game element. In the card game Magic: The Gathering, if a particular card is deemed to be too good, then it is possible to ban it. One can define completely that “that card cannot be used.” There is no fear of players still “sort of” using it, in the same way they could still “sort of” repeat the moves from the fighting game, or “sort of” camp for 2 minutes 59 seconds above. The card is a discrete entity that can feasibly be banned.

Warranted

Here is the whole issue, of course. If it isn’t warranted to ban something, we don’t need to even consider whether it’s enforceable or discrete. The great lesson of competitive games is that hardly anything warrants a ban.

A bug that gives players a small advantage does not warrant a ban. In fact, it’s common. Many players don’t even realize they are using bugs, but instead view them as “advanced tactics.” Even bugs that have a huge effect on gameplay are usually not warranted to be banned. The game may change with the new tactic, but games are resilient and there tend to be countermeasures (sometimes other bugs) to almost everything.

In the fighting game Street Fighter Alpha 2, there is a bug that allows the player to activate a very damaging move (called “Custom Combo”) against an opponent who is standing up (not crouching). The designers surely intended a standing opponent to be able to crouch and block this move upon seeing it, but if executed correctly, he cannot. It has a huge impact on the way the game is played (standing up is now quite dangerous), but there is still an excellent game left even after this technique is known. At first glance, one might think that attacking is too dangerous because it usually involves standing up. Closer examination shows that the attacker can stick out moves to knock the defender out of his Custom Combo, should he try it. Basically, the bug can be dealt with. This game-changing tactic is referred to by players as the “Valle CC” after its inventor, Alex Valle (more on him later).

As another example, consider the puzzle game Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo. It’s vaguely like Tetris. In this game, blocks of various colors fall into your basin and you try to match up the colors to break these blocks to fill up your opponent’s basin. If you fill up his basin to the top, you win.

Puzzle Fighter has a game-altering bug. A feature called the diamond lets the player break all blocks of a certain color on his own side (even if they aren’t lined up) and send blocks to the opponent’s side. Usually, doing this means sending much, much fewer blocks than if the player had broken all the blocks of that color manually. It’s a tradeoff since the diamond allows the player to break all those blocks instantly, but at the price of a smaller attack. There is a bug, though, called the “diamond trick” that allows the player to send even more blocks with the diamond than he would have sent breaking all his blocks of that color manually. The diamond goes from “get me out of trouble” to being a serious, game-ending thwomp. It’s nearly impossible to defeat a player who uses the diamond trick without using it yourself.

Amongst players who all know this trick, there is still a good game. One player can use his diamond trick to cancel out the other player’s. Each player gets diamond every twenty-fifth piece, so you can count on the other player getting his diamond about the same time you get yours. You can also just break a lot of blocks right when the opponent does his diamond trick. This will allow you to cancel some of the incoming block, but still give you a pretty full basin. A peculiarity of Puzzle Fighter is that when your basin is nearly full, you then have a lot of ammunition to send back to the opponent. A clever player can turn the other player’s huge diamond trick into a stockpile of ammunition to fire back for the win. In the end, the trick merely changes the game and does not destroy it, and is certainly not worthy of banning.

How does one know if a bug destroys the game or even if a legitimate tactic destroys it? The rule of thumb is to assume it doesn’t and keep playing, because 99% of the time, as good as the tactic may be, there will either be a way to counter it or other even better tactics. Prematurely banning something is the scrub’s way. It prevents the scrub from ever discovering the counter to the Valle CC or the diamond trick. It also creates artificial rules that alter the game, when it’s entirely possible that the game was just fine the way it was. It also usually leads to an avalanche of bans in order to be consistent with the first. When players think they have found a game-breaking tactic, I advise them to go win some tournaments with it. If they can prove that the game really is reduced to just that tactic, then perhaps a ban is warranted. It’s extremely rare that a player is ever able to prove this though. In fact, I don’t even have any examples of it.

A note to game developers: fix your bugs after release if you have the opportunity to do so. But beware that players enjoy the feeling of wielding “unfair” tactics, and taking that away from them can be a mistake if the “unfair” tactic isn’t powerful enough to single-handedly win tournaments.

Immediately Ban-worthy Glitches

There are some things so extreme that they can be banned without much testing. These include glitches that crash the game or have radical effects, such as blanking out the opponent’s entire screen, removing his characters, units, or resources from the game, and so forth. Glitches so extreme that they undeniably end or prevent gameplay are worthy of being banned. Likewise, so are glitches that are not equally available to all players. Some glitches in a two player game can only be performed by player 2. It is reasonable to ban such a tactic, even if it’s not overly powerful, just on the basis that all players do not have equal access to it.

“It’s Too Good!”

Only in the most extreme, rare cases should something be banned because it is “too good.” This will be the most common type of ban requested by players, and almost all of their requests will be foolish. Banning a tactic simply because it is “the best” isn’t even warranted. That only reduces the game to all the “second best” tactics, which isn’t necessarily any better of a game than the original game. In fact, it’s often worse!

The only reasonable case to ban something because it is “too good” is when that tactic completely dominates the entire game, to the exclusion of other tactics. It is possible, though very rare, that removing an element of the game that is not only “the best” but also “ten times better than anything else in the game” results in a better game. I emphasize that is extremely rare. The most common case is that the player requesting the ban doesn’t fully grasp that the game is, in fact, not all about that one tactic. He should win several tournaments using mainly this tactic to prove his point. Another, far rarer possibility is that he’s right. The game really is shallow and centered on one thing (whether that one thing is a bug or by design is irrelevant). In that case, the best course of action is usually to abandon the game and play one of the hundreds of other readily available good games in the world.

Only in the ultra-rare case that the player is right and the game is worth saving and the game without the ultra-tactic is a ten times better game—only then is the notion even worth fighting for. And even in this case, it may take time for the game to mature enough for a great percentage of the best players and tournament organizers to realize that tactic should, indeed, be banned. Before an official ban takes place, there can also be something called “soft ban.” Let’s look at an example.

The Two Excellent Examples of “Super Turbo”

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, or “Super Turbo,” is a wonderful example of bannings in fighting games. As of this writing, the arcade game is ten years old and still played in tournaments. In fact, there are one or two tournaments per week in this game in Tokyo alone. The game is quite mature, and there is a decade of data about the game’s balance. Many versions of Street Fighter have "secret characters" that are only accessible through a code. Sometimes these characters are good; sometimes they're not. Occasionally, the secret characters are the best in the game as in the game Marvel vs. Capcom 1. Big deal. That's the way that game is. Live with it. But Super Turbo was the first version of Street Fighter to ever have a secret character: the untouchably good Akuma. Most characters in that game cannot beat Akuma. I don't mean it's a tough match--I mean they cannot ever, ever, ever, ever win. Akuma is "broken" in that his air fireball move is something the game simply wasn't designed to handle. He is not merely the best character in the game, but is at least ten times better than other characters. This case is so extreme that all top players in America immediately realized that all tournaments would be Akuma vs. Akuma only, and so the character was banned with basically no debate and has been ever since. I believe this was the correct decision.

Japan, however, does not officially ban Akuma from tournaments! They have what is called a "soft ban." This is a tacit understanding amongst all top players that Akuma is too good to be played, and that he destroys an otherwise beautiful game, so they unofficially agree not to play him. There are always a very small number of people who do play him in tournaments, but never the top players. Usually a few poor players try their hand at the god-character and lose, which is utterly humiliating and crowd-pleasing. This is an interesting alternate take on the "hard ban" we have in America.

That's all well and good, but Japan has also shown signs of a soft-ban on another character in Super Turbo. I bring up this example because it lives on the threshold. It is just on the edge of what is reasonable to ban because it is "too good." Anything less than this would not be reasonable, so perhaps others can use it as a benchmark to decide what is reasonable in their games.

The character in question is the mysteriously named "Old Sagat." Old Sagat is not a secret character like Akuma (or at least he's not as secret!). Old Sagat does not have any moves like Akuma's air fireball that the game was not designed to handle. Old Sagat is arguably the best character in the game (Akuma, of course, doesn't count), but even that is debated by top players! I think almost any expert player would rank him in the top three of all characters, but there isn't even universal agreement that he is the best! Why, then, would any reasonable person even consider banning him? Surely, it must be a group of scrubs who simply don't know how to beat him, and reflexively cry out for a ban.

But this is not the case. There seems to be a tacit agreement amongst top players in Japan--a soft ban--on playing Old Sagat. The reason is that many believe the game to have much more variety without Old Sagat. Even if he is only second best in the game by some measure, he flat out beats half the characters in the game with little effort. Half the cast can barely even fight him, let alone beat him. Other top characters in the game, good as they are, win by much more interaction and more "gameplay." Almost every character has a chance against the other best characters in the game. The result of allowing Old Sagat in tournaments is that several other characters, such as Chun Li and Ken, become basically unviable.

If someone had made these claims in the game's infancy, no sort of ban would be warranted. Further testing through tournaments would be warranted. But we now have ten years of testing. We don't have all Old Sagat vs. Old Sagat matches in tournaments, but we do know which characters can't beat him and as a result are very rarely played in America. We likewise can see that this same category of characters flourishes in Japan, where Old Sagats are rare and only played by the occasional violator of the soft ban. It seems that the added variety of viable characters might outweigh the lack of Old Sagat. Is this ban warranted then? To be honest, I am not totally convinced that it is, but it is just barely in the ballpark of reasonableness since there is a decade of data on which to base the claim. Many versions of Street Fighter have “secret characters” that are only accessible through a code. Sometimes these characters are good; sometimes they’re not. Occasionally, the secret characters are the best in the game as in the game Marvel vs. Capcom 1. Big deal. That’s the way that game is. Live with it. But Super Turbo was the first version of Street Fighter to ever have a secret character: the untouchably good Akuma. Most characters in that game cannot beat Akuma. I don’t mean it’s a tough match—I mean they cannot ever, ever, ever, ever win. Akuma is “broken” in that his air fireball move is something the game simply wasn’t designed to handle. He is not merely the best character in the game, but is at least ten times better than other characters. This case is so extreme that all top players in America immediately realized that all tournaments would be Akuma vs. Akuma only, and so the character was banned with basically no debate and has been ever since. I believe this was the correct decision.

Japan, however, does not officially ban Akuma from tournaments! They have what is called a “soft ban.” This is a tacit understanding amongst all top players that Akuma is too good to be played, and that he destroys an otherwise beautiful game, so they unofficially agree not to play him. There are always a very small number of people who do play him in tournaments, but never the top players. Usually a few poor players try their hand at the god-character and lose, which is utterly humiliating and crowd-pleasing. This is an interesting alternate take on the “hard ban” we have in America.

That’s all well and good, but Japan has also shown signs of a soft-ban on another character in Super Turbo. I bring up this example because it lives on the threshold. It is just on the edge of what is reasonable to ban because it is “too good.” Anything less than this would not be reasonable, so perhaps others can use it as a benchmark to decide what is reasonable in their games.

The character in question is the mysteriously named “Old Sagat.” Old Sagat is not a secret character like Akuma (or at least he’s not as secret!). Old Sagat does not have any moves like Akuma’s air fireball that the game was not designed to handle. Old Sagat is arguably the best character in the game (Akuma, of course, doesn’t count), but even that is debated by top players! I think almost any expert player would rank him in the top three of all characters, but there isn’t even universal agreement that he is the best! Why, then, would any reasonable person even consider banning him? Surely, it must be a group of scrubs who simply don’t know how to beat him, and reflexively cry out for a ban.

But this is not the case. There seems to be a tacit agreement amongst top players in Japan—a soft ban—on playing Old Sagat. The reason is that many believe the game to have much more variety without Old Sagat. Even if he is only second best in the game by some measure, he flat out beats half the characters in the game with little effort. Half the cast can barely even fight him, let alone beat him. Other top characters in the game, good as they are, win by much more interaction and more “gameplay.” Almost every character has a chance against the other best characters in the game. The result of allowing Old Sagat in tournaments is that several other characters, such as Chun Li and Ken, become basically unviable.

If someone had made these claims in the game’s infancy, no sort of ban would be warranted. Further testing through tournaments would be warranted. But we now have ten years of testing. We don’t have all Old Sagat vs. Old Sagat matches in tournaments, but we do know which characters can’t beat him and as a result are very rarely played in America. We likewise can see that this same category of characters flourishes in Japan, where Old Sagats are rare and only played by the occasional violator of the soft ban. It seems that the added variety of viable characters might outweigh the lack of Old Sagat. Is this ban warranted then? To be honest, I am not totally convinced that it is, but it is just barely in the ballpark of reasonableness since there is a decade of data on which to base the claim.

Some people have asked if they should use these means to win:

“What about using the map hack in StarCraft, or a packet interceptor, or a macro to cast your spells faster, or just a swift kick to the shins of your opponent?”

One of the great things about playing to win is that it’s a path of self-improvement that can be measured. In playing to win, we have the cold, hard results of winning and losing to guide us along that path. I think it’s only useful to consider winning and losing in the context of formal competition such as tournaments. Kicking your opponents in the shins is outside the scope of the game, and is not legal in any reasonable tournament.

Likewise, any third party program obtained from an illegal warez site and installed as a hack into your game is also not going to be legal in any reasonable tournament. These things, though technically useful to those trying to win, are outside the path of continuous self-improvement that I’m talking about since they are outside of the rules of tournaments. You should use any tournament legal means to win. If you participate in some strange tournament where all players are allowed to use a map hack, then go for it. You’re playing a rather weird, nonstandard version of the game, though, which defeats the whole purpose of shedding extra rules so as to play the same game as everyone else. Any reasonable person would consider “no cheating from outside the game” to be part of the default rule set of any game. Some would interpret my attitude of winning by any means necessary to imply that I have no appreciation of sportsmanship. Quite the contrary, I have observed that the very best players are likely to be excellent sports. Part of sportsmanship is keeping calm when you lose. Playing to win involves viewing a loss as an opportunity to learn and improve. Getting hot-headed and yelling at an opponent or muttering under your breath that you lost to a “no-skilled scrub” does not accomplish that.

Being a good sport also involves winning politely and observing customs of etiquette before and after a match such as bowing, shaking hands, saying “good game,” or whatever is appropriate. There is always the tendency to gloat, but being polite and reserved is the way to positively influence other people. Judges are people, too, and when a judgment call must be made, judges are often itching to find a technicality to use against a bad sport. Other players, perhaps potential sparring partners, team members, or keepers of secret information about the game are likely to be more open to a good sport than a raving lunatic or an idiot.

Some ask why they should not scream racist or other offensive remarks, spit on the shoes of their opponents, beat their chests, or otherwise intimidate the enemy. After all, they say, the purpose is to win using any legal means, period. Isn’t that what I have said? First of all, some of these activities may not be legal in a tournament. Second, they violate the principle of goodwill that I described above. And third, I am not convinced they offer any real strategic advantage. They are more likely to make you look stupid, and create an air of negativity that will follow you.

That said, I do know of a few skilled players who use these tactics. There is usually leeway in a tournament to be physically intimidating and say mean and scary things just short of actually violating any rules. Trash talking before the event over the internet is pretty much always legal, too. Perhaps these players are playing to their own strengths by being bullies. This behavior does give them advantages over some opponents, but the costs seem too great overall for me to endorse this as a winning strategy.

If you wish to rile your opponent up, there are plenty of ways to do this within most games. There are ways of playing that are annoying and provoking. When an opponent plays defensively, expecting you to attack him, you can play defensively, too. This may annoy him and throw him off. Or, you can make moves that obviously have no purpose as a way of “taunting” an opponent you have an advantage over. Anything you do inside the game is good and right and beyond the scope of making you a bad sport. All is fair in war.

If your aim is to intimidate the opponent, then I am all for that. But there are polite, sportsman-like ways of doing this. The best way by far is to win tournaments. See what your next opponent thinks of you then. Just give him something as simple as a half-hearted glance and empty-sounding “good luck” before the match and he will probably fall over like a feather from your presence. When a player radiates a sense of total dominance at a game, I call this a “fear aura.” The most unlikely of pale, white computer geeks can strike fear into the hearts of other gamers when they discover that he is, in fact, “PhatDan09” or whatever name is known to dominate tournaments. With the fear aura, he is able to get away with gambits and maneuvers no ordinary player could ever pull off, just because the opponent gives him the extreme benefit of the doubt on everything that occurs in the game. If the wielder of the fear aura appears to be vulnerable, perhaps it is just what he wants you to think. It might be safer to hesitate, and then—oops—to lose. Once you develop your fear aura through excellent play and winning, you will laugh at the relatively ineffective notion of intimidating opponents with offensive verbal comments.

A Challenge

While do I have a 360, I never got around buying Street Fighter 4 unfortunately. Haven't played any SF game so I'm afraid I'll have too reject your challenge D:. -- Thadeous Oakley Talk 15:29, 27 May 2011 (BST)

Warning

Please do not vandalise this wiki. Continuing this behaviour may lead to your editing privileges being revoked. You are being warned for altering policy discussion pages in accordance with this case. --Karek^{maps 2.0?!} 00:08, 22 May 2011 (BST)

Fighting game challenge

I'm certainly interested, but I must profess that I'm terrible at fighting games (I've also not had the pleasure of playing any of the aforementioned titles). So, I'm interested, but I may not be able to rise to the challenge.--Yonnua Koponen ^{T G P} ^^^ 15:51, 27 May 2011 (BST)

I'm glad to hear that you're interested. It would probably be easier to communicate in an irc channel of some sort, though. How about #urbandead on synirc? --||||||||||||||||||||||||| 16:06, 27 May 2011 (BST)