Playing to Win

I myself has always considered myself a sort of a gamer. And one evening I stumbled upon an article that changed the way I played games. The article was "Playing to Win" by David Sirlin. He was a competitive Street Fighter Player and a MIT graduate. He talked about scrubs and what they would refer to as cheap. The game knows nothing about cheapness, only winning or losing. "Cheap" is what people refer to when others goes against their home made rules that the game knows nothing about. For example in Street Fighter. Turtling may be considered cheap ( sitting in the corner blocking), throwing someone five times in a row may be considered cheap, spamming fireballs may be considered cheap. But in reality people only call it cheap because they cannot deal with it. They say it takes no skills because it is something so simple. But there were never a prize in any tournament for the players who did the most difficult moves. The point of the game is to win.

I play many online games that often do have a competitive scene and many people are like that. They often overestimate themselves and blame their teammates when losing when in fact its their fault. Understanding your weakness is the first step to getting better. If you don't think you need to improve you won't. This is one of the big problems in online games. People are restricted by their own homemade rules and they just call "cheap" when they lose because of the restrictions they placed upon themselves. But me? I try to improve my game and evolve to play and win.