Sportsmanship in video games

[BardicKnowledge]

Except that it's no different from the scrub's "arbitrary rules". In one of his articles, he mentions Akuma has an example of a legitimate ban. Akuma is apparently so overpowered that if he was legal, every tournement battle would be Akuma vs Akuma. What he fails to do is explain why this is a bad thing. He actively encourages players to forgo playing weaker characters if that's what it takes to win (with the caveat that "weaker" characters may have some hidden advantages that make them viable in competitive play). How is Akuma any different? If Akuma is the best character, and you're playing to win, then obviously you should play Akuma. But yet, this is an exception for some reason -- and Akuma is banned, even by those who play to win. Either there's some difference somewhere that he failed to make explicit and I'm not catching on my own, or else he (and the entire community) is contradicting itself.

The key is that Akuma completely dominates the metagame to the exclusion of all other tactics. Specifically, his air fireball basically breaks the SF2 engine (even the HDR engine doesn't handle it all that well) -- there is flat out no better tactic in the entire game than air-fireball into Akuma's super. Not to mention the fact that Akuma's moveset is the best of both Ryu and Ken -- his fireball (blue) recovers faster than Ryu's, and his uppercut does more damage (and has more priority) than Ken's. His hurricane kick combos INTO his uppercut...and the list goes on.

Why is this bad?

There's a much richer game left if you remove Akuma. Put another way, there are a MUCH wider variety of available (competitively viable) strategies and ways to play the game if Akuma is banned.

No one would want to play a fighter with only one character -- and as far as competitive play is concerned, Akuma is the ONLY character worth playing, assuming that he is allowed. Thankfully, the community decided to ban him. Trust me -- if anything dominated the way the game was played as much as ST Akuma, it'd be banned...assuming that the ban is enforcable.

[zircon]

Exactly. On the other hand, a scrub would say "ban throws". Throws do NOT break the metagame. They are an integral part of the game's design. If the opponent blocks too much, you throw them. Without throws, blocking becomes way too good and it unbalances the game. Not only that but it's easy to accidentally throw, so even if the ban WERE warranted, it's not discrete and not really enforceable. However, a scrub thinks throws are "cheap" because they have made up an arbitrary ruleset in their head where they should be allowed to block forever and not take any damage (trust me, this is how I used to think too - it's pretty common in fighters.) The game in fact is not designed like that and shouldn't BE like that.

[JackKieser]

See, the problem with what Zircon is asserting is that no one who knows a game's mechanics would argue that banning throws is a good idea. But, when someone says "throws are overpowered" (very few would actually go far enough to want them to be banned entirely), they are labelled a "scrub" by competitive players. Competitive players almost instantly and unanimously label a person like that with a name meant, by definition, to demean and make no attempt to educate the person.

Maybe he IS playing to win. Maybe not. Either way, he's not a scrub, he's just uninformed, but that can be fixed easily. Well, it can be fixed easily as long as players are willing to teach and not be assholes. Like I said before, I've seen this at tournaments ALL THE TIME. The instant the word "cheap" comes out of a person's mouth, people badmouth, trash talk, etc. the poor guy and refuse to play with him from that point onward (again, with a few exceptions; myself and other TOs I work with try to educate new/uninformed players on any aspect of the game).

Quite simply, Native Jovian has it right: competitive players use Sirlin as an excuse to put themselves on a pedestal. That quotation reads like it should come out of some holy war scripture or something; competitive players are ordained by the Gods of Gaming to smite the "scrubs" in the holy name of competition. It's ridiculous.

When I was trying to build a ban criteria for ISP (I'm acutally surprised someone here knew about that, ), I ran into the problem of figuring out exactly what was "too broken". We still, technically, haven't. We're working on it, but we have put things in place to mitigate that for the time being. Giving EVERYONE a say in the outcome of the rules helps, but ultimately giving a final call to raw frame/damage/code data is a big part of being successful. The rest of Smash (from what I've read on all the tactical boards) is way more subjective than our project will ever be, but because we are advocating items, we get badmouthed all the time; hell, the very first thread (out of a total of three so far) had to be mod-protected from all the flaming and ended up being shut down since a majority of the posts were people telling us we were idiots for even suggesting alternate ways to play (not even replacement ways!).

Ultimately, I think that a player with sportsmanship knows when to pull out all the stops and when not to. If M2K (God Smash player, for those who don't know) meets noob player A in pools and sandbags a little after the first match (the match where he learned there was no way he'd lose anyway), that doesn't mean he's a disgrace to the Sirlinian way; it just means he didn't actively push a new player away from the game by being a dick. Hell, if he shakes the dude's hand afterwards and offers to teach him a thing or two later, THAT'S true sportsmanship; I wish I'd see more players shaking hands after even pools matches at the tournaments I run...

[Native Jovian]

The key is that Akuma completely dominates the metagame to the exclusion of all other tactics.

Why is this bad?

There's a much richer game left if you remove Akuma.

Well, now you're not just playing to win anymore, are you? If you ban Akuma for "richness" (what does that even mean?), then where do you draw the line? I'm not saying that a ban is a bad idea (like I said, I could care less how you play the game), I'm just saying that now there's another force at work besides just "playing to win", which means you're being just as arbitrary as scrubs. The only difference is that your "added rules" list is shorter (it's "no Akuma" instead of "no Akuma, no throws, no spamming moves and no infinite combos" or whatever).

[BardicKnowledge]

Well, now you're not just playing to win anymore, are you? If you ban Akuma for "richness" (what does that even mean?), then where do you draw the line? I'm not saying that a ban is a bad idea (like I said, I could care less how you play the game), I'm just saying that now there's another force at work besides just "playing to win", which means you're being just as arbitrary as scrubs. The only difference is that your "added rules" list is shorter (it's "no Akuma" instead of "no Akuma, no throws, no spamming moves and no infinite combos" or whatever).

NJ, you're usually awesome -- the VERY NEXT SENTENCE after your quote explains what "richness" means in this context. Please read the whole post next time.

Edit: The whole of your post however, is accurate. "Playing to win" doesn't include utilizing things that completely wreck the game, according to Sirlin. And yes, it's completely subjective (up to the community) what qualifies as "completely wrecking".

[zircon]

The point of Sirlin's guide is to educate the scrub, not to say "be a dick to scrubs." Playing in his mindset has helped me to enjoy games (and be better at them) way more. When you stop thinking "oh that's so cheap" and start thinking "that's pretty powerful, I wonder if I can do it, or how I can counter it" it's a lot of fun. Also, where does he say you're not supposed to educate a scrub? If you go on the Shoryuken forums, it's a tough crowd, but there are countless topics for players of all skill levels to ask questions, share tactics, and get better.

[zircon]

The point of Sirlin's guide is to educate the scrub, not to say "be a dick to scrubs." Playing in his mindset has helped me to enjoy games (and be better at them) way more. When you stop thinking "oh that's so cheap" and start thinking "that's pretty powerful, I wonder if I can do it, or how I can counter it" it's a lot of fun. Also, where does he say you're not supposed to educate a scrub? If you go on the Shoryuken forums, it's a tough crowd, but there are countless topics for players of all skill levels to ask questions, share tactics, and get better.

People that take away the message "it's OK to be a jerk, not teach anyone anything, and play as hard as you can vs. your 6-year old sister" from "playing to win" are missing the point.

[JackKieser]

The fact that he even calls uneducated players a name like "scrub" in the first place shows exactly how he feels on the subject. "Scrub" players are lesser players. They aren't playing right. He says it explicitly. You can't think that way and NOT treat people badly; that's textbook superiority complex.

Do you even go to tournaments? Serious question. If not, you have no idea how competitive players act in a competitive environment (and internet competition doesn't count, thanks to John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory). On a forum, it's expected that the uneducated lurk moar before they post so that they know what they're talking about; I don't know how many times I've flamed people for not using SWF's search function / reading the stickies. Forums are compilations of information; if someone has a legit question, he shouldn't be flamed, but there's such a thing as reading.

In a tournament setting, this is totally different. If you don't understand something, those without iPhones have to ASK, or at least voice something. It's those people that get screwed at tournaments; pro players get their kicks out of playing "friendlies" with noob players and utterly destroying them. Sure, there are some decent people out there (if anyone ever gets a chance to play ANY fighter against T-rex or Mr. 3000 in Texas Smash, please do; they're the most decent pro players you'll ever meet), but the majority like their little Pro's Club, and take every opportunity to show how l33t their skills are.

Every pro that ascribes to a Sirlinian outlook by definition has nothing but contempt for anyone labelled a "scrub". It's not up to the scrub to just "realize" he's being a lesser player and not living up to the true glory that is competition and playing to win; it's the pro's job to prove that playing to win is just as fun as playing for... well, fun. They're the one making the assertion; sure, an uneducated player is asserting that something is broken, but you can't lead yourself out of a dark cave with no light, right? If the pro's want people to stop being uneducated at tournaments, you would think they'd step up, as the pros, and do a little teaching.

[zircon]

The fact that he even calls uneducated players a name like "scrub" in the first place shows exactly how he feels on the subject. "Scrub" players are lesser players. They aren't playing right. He says it explicitly. You can't think that way and NOT treat people badly; that's textbook superiority complex.

But there's a big difference between an uneducated player and a "scrub". The uneducated player isn't very good, but wants to improve and learn the game more. They don't complain about every obstacle that they encounter and call everything "cheap", rather they strive to get better. You can be bad and not be a scrub.

Every pro that ascribes to a Sirlinian outlook by definition has nothing but contempt for anyone labelled a "scrub". It's not up to the scrub to just "realize" he's being a lesser player and not living up to the true glory that is competition and playing to win; it's the pro's job to prove that playing to win is just as fun as playing for... well, fun. They're the one making the assertion; sure, an uneducated player is asserting that something is broken, but you can't lead yourself out of a dark cave with no light, right? If the pro's want people to stop being uneducated at tournaments, you would think they'd step up, as the pros, and do a little teaching.

What do you think the whole point of the book Playing to Win is? You think he's NOT helping people to get better? On the contrary, as I've been saying, it's certainly helped me. He said he's received tons of letters from gamers in all communities saying the same thing. If you go to forums like SRK, which are very competitive, you will find plenty of pros helping others. Within our community you'll find the same thing in games like TF2 and HoN, where some people are clearly way better.

What you're saying isn't really making any sense. The playing to win mindset is the standard in nearly any competitive game or sport, yet the communities surrounding all these games and sports are hardly falling apart. You're saying playing to win is DIFFERENT than "playing for fun", but it isn't. Games are fun. The whole point of them is entertainment. So, everyone that plays is having fun regardless. However, it's still MORE fun to get better at a game or sport, and try to win at it.

What if everyone played basketball and only threw the ball "underhanded", like they did as 5-year old kids? The game would obviously be not nearly as interesting as all the many types of shots, layups and even dunks that exist. What if everyone played Counter-Strike without "camping"? HoN without half the "cheap" heroes? SF without throws? I could go on. The scrub encounters these things and doesn't understand why they're an integral part of the game, and how they must be learned to become better at the game (having more fun in the process - more tactics/depth is better than less, all things being equal.) The bad player might not knowing how to do or counter all that stuff, but they at least try.

[JackKieser]

Let's get one thing straight: there is no player who ever goes to a tournament without liking the game first; I've never seen a noob player come to a tournament and NOT already like the game. By definition, the noob player has either played exclusivly as a casual or has only played low-level competitive matches. Let's take any noob player and throw him up against anyone who knows, for instance, the Ice Climber infinites.

IC infinites have a few important weaknesses. First, the IC's have shit grab range. Second, you need both Climbers to do them, and separating them stops the grab (thanks to Nana's craptastic AI). Third, they are tough to time right and have different timings on different characters. Add all these up and the IC infinites can definitely be beaten (even if they can potentially result in a 0-death on the entire cast-the IC's).

If ANY noob who does not know the above info gets IC grabbed, I guarantee you, $1000 on the table right now, I'll put it on PayPal, they will cry foul. You can't ignore that. Unless they already read Sirlin (and fell to his wiles), they'll think that's broken, and it's logical that they should! A OHKO grab? In a DEFENSIVE game? That takes away ALL player control? Any logical person, not knowing the weaknesses, would complain about that.

But you're expecting me to believe that everyone has the ability to intrinsically know NOT to complain about something as extreme as that? To an unknowledgable player, everything exploitable seems like an IC infinite, even grabs (in some games). That's why they're uneducated, why they're new.

No player wants to stay stagnant at a game they enjoy. If you enjoy playing a game (and it's fairly obvious that most people who go to a tournament, noob or pro, love the game there), you always want to get better, even if it's just better than your friends. But, being beaten into the ground and mocked afterward, especially when all you're doing is (basically) asking how something that seems (to you) to be broken is allowed? Yeah, that's enough to make anyone quit playing out of sheer frustration / shame.

No one, not even a "scrub", really wants to play a watered-down game; everyone, however, DOES want a fair shot, and when people see things that, from their perspective, are unfair, they have EVERY RIGHT to call foul. Sirlin be damned, I hope everyone calls foul their first time; I'm all for dissent. But, let's be clear on something: you're precious OCR TF2 server and your forums are NOT a real-life, in-person tournament.

Go to a 300-man tournament some time, one with a 15$ buy in and a 1000$ sponsorship on the line. Because I've hosted one of those. WHOBO at Anime Matsuri '09. Look it up. I was recording matches there, aside from running tournaments; I saw a lot. Pros at tournaments are dicks, for the most part. They are part of an exclusive club, and they are taught by people like Sirlin that, not because of their skill, but because of their mindset (play to win), they are intrinsically better than others (and you still haven't, btw, refuted that quotation; try to justify how that isn't exclusionary fanaticism, please). Put 1500$ on the line, and see how people act. Go ahead.

There are plenty of people that HATE Brawl and still play in tournaments. Seriously. People that detest Brawl as a game that is killing off a superior game in Melee. They still play Brawl not because they enjoy it, but because it makes them money. Don't try to make the assertion that everyone who ascribes to Sirlin's teachings also loves to play their respective game, because that's wishful thinking.

Flat out, Sirlin's own writings assert (again, explicitly) that if you complain about anything that seems cheap to you, you are a scrub and need spiritual reformation. That is disingenuous at best. You say that you can be bad and not be a scrub? Yeah, those are the people who already agree with Sirlin. People can learn and get better and still not agree that taking complete control away from a player is fair (IC grabs); to Sirlin, they're still scrubs. So, to him, you can be bad and not be a scrub, but you can be good and still be a scrub, too. It's a no win... unless you agree with Sirlin, of course.

[zircon]

But you're expecting me to believe that everyone has the ability to intrinsically know NOT to complain about something as extreme as that? To an unknowledgable player, everything exploitable seems like an IC infinite, even grabs (in some games). That's why they're uneducated, why they're new.

You're splitting hairs here. Yes, maybe when they first see that, any player would cry foul. However, that doesn't mean their reaction after seeing it 5, 10, 15, 20 times is going to be the same. It's a common question one asks in any sport. "Wow, bunting in baseball seems really awesome. It makes everyone come to you. Why doesn't everyone use it?" You want that mindset, where even if you don't understand how to beat something, your goal is to try to learn about it more, not try to dismiss it immediately.

This comes up in HoN all the time. We encounter heroes or tactics that we don't understand, but generally, as an OCR group, we don't outright ban thins. We learn. Early on, we WERE all about banning things, until we all got better.

But, being beaten into the ground and mocked afterward, especially when all you're doing is (basically) asking how something that seems (to you) to be broken is allowed? Yeah, that's enough to make anyone quit playing out of sheer frustration / shame.

Where did Sirlin tell anybody to "mock" them? That's not part of playing to win. If you're playing against opponents that much worse than you, you're playing the wrong opponents, which is not ultimately conducive to getting better (and thus, isn't even playing to win; it's being a dick.) He also never encouraged people to withold tactics or secrets. Again, the top SF players share their tactics.

Go to a 300-man tournament some time, one with a 15$ buy in and a 1000$ sponsorship on the line. Because I've hosted one of those. WHOBO at Anime Matsuri '09. Look it up. I was recording matches there, aside from running tournaments; I saw a lot. Pros at tournaments are dicks, for the most part. They are part of an exclusive club, and they are taught by people like Sirlin that, not because of their skill, but because of their mindset (play to win), they are intrinsically better than others (and you still haven't, btw, refuted that quotation; try to justify how that isn't exclusionary fanaticism, please). Put 1500$ on the line, and see how people act. Go ahead.

What point are you trying to make here? It seems irrelevant. You're trying to say people act like jerks at tournaments? OK? What does this have to do with the argument at all? It certainly doesn't have to do with Sirlin's article, which doesn't advocate that.

Flat out, Sirlin's own writings assert (again, explicitly) that if you complain about anything that seems cheap to you, you are a scrub and need spiritual reformation. That is disingenuous at best. You say that you can be bad and not be a scrub? Yeah, those are the people who already agree with Sirlin. People can learn and get better and still not agree that taking complete control away from a player is fair (IC grabs); to Sirlin, they're still scrubs. So, to him, you can be bad and not be a scrub, but you can be good and still be a scrub, too. It's a no win... unless you agree with Sirlin, of course.

This is just wrong. Sirlin would say in this case that there is certainly cause for a debate. A move that can end the match basically instantly is certainly worth looking into. He himself rebalanced Super Turbo to remove infinite loops that were virtually impossible to get out of. However, Super Turbo had over a decade of balance testing and thousands of tournaments worth of data to analyze. The decision to rework the game code to remove these infinite loops was thus a VERY carefully planned-out one, and it was done with the help and input of basically all the top SF players. Such techniques were never banned previously, and a few people still maintain that they shouldn't have been removed.

I don't think you can be a good player at a game and still be a scrub. No pro SF players complain about throws. No basketball players complain about dunks. No baseball players complain about bunts. Do you understand what I'm saying? You don't see Kobe Bryant whining that Shaq is too big, and that it's "unfair".

However even THIS is beside the point. COMPLAINING does not make you a scrub. It's the mindset where you make up your own rules of what is "fair" and what isn't, independent of the established rules of the game, and independent of those of the community at large. It's the mindset of "I should be able to block all the time and not take damage." It's the mindset of "You're not allowed to steal the ball from me in basketball - I should be allowed to take all the time I want to take a shot." It's the mindset of "It's not fair to fight two on one in a PVP game." This is the core point that Sirlin is getting at, and you're really missing it completely. There is a fundamental difference between the guy that rages because 2 people ganged up on him in a PVP game, and the guy that says "damn, I should have been more careful - I need to try that sometime."

[JackKieser]

Ok, go back a few pages and read that quotation, please. If you'd just do that, all of this would make sense to you.

... ... ...done? Ok, we'll move on.

Remember, Sirlin's articles all make a few assumptions:

A ) The majority, ultimately, is right. It has to be; they're the ones making the rules. Since there is no objective ban criteria (and he makes no attempts to define any), ultimately the majority (or at least, the majority of pros) make the rules.

B ) If you don't agree with the rules, you are a scrub. He says it, pretty much flat out in his definition of what a scrub is. The scrub cries foul and says something is unfair. Xyro, one of Texas' top TOs, thinks Metaknight, an entire character, is unfair. He also thinks the IC grabs are unfair. He, aside from being a top TO, is one of Texas' top Samus players. He's a good player, and Sirlin would call him a scrub.

C ) According to that quotation, "play to win" is a mindset, a philosophy. Anyone who doesn't agree needs a pro to reform them by beating them. But, according to "play to win", if you're in a tournament match and you DON'T do everything at your disposal to win, you're not really playing to win. Forget if you have no chance of losing because you're playing someone who has never been to a tournament before; you had better pick D3 and chain grab against a wall for 7 minutes, because that's the easiest way to win (it's a "brick wall", according to Sirlin). That kind of behavior makes people not want to play.

D ) This entire thread is about sportsmanship, remember? Sirlin's atricles advocate thinking that you have a superior mindset to other people, and history (human history, not just gaming history) proves that people who think they are intrinsically better in any capacity will mistreat people they consider to be beneath them. A pro player who believes in the scrub mentality will, without fail, act in an unsportsmanlike manner. The fact of the matter is that I have proof to this (sure, you have to take my word, but I have staff that will back me up here); you have yet to even admit you've ever been to a live tournament.

I don't care if Sirlin doesn't have an article that's named "Playing to Win - Mocking the Opposition"; his teachings will make people do it by their very nature. I also don't care if your in-group of players gradually matured over the course of playing a game with each other, because that is NOT what a pro tournament setting is like at all. At a tournament, pros expect you to be pro, too. If you aren't, you're excluded, unless you're lucky enough to find a pro with a sense of sportsmanship, which can be rare.

So, let's boil it down for you, hmm?

* "Play to win" sets out a "moral" superiority and a definition for inferior people

* People, by their nature, will most likely treat people they are taught are inferior like crap

* Treating other people like crap in a competitive environment is unsportsmanlike

* Sirlin, though not explicitly (all the time), lays the groundwork for unsportsmanlike conduct

* ???

* Profit!!

[zircon]

A ) The majority, ultimately, is right. It has to be; they're the ones making the rules. Since there is no objective ban criteria (and he makes no attempts to define any), ultimately the majority (or at least, the majority of pros) make the rules.

He outlines as good a set of ban criteria as one could possibly make. Also, the assumption that the majority of people playing a game is right by default is pretty hard to deny (though actually what Sirlin is REALLY saying is that by default, the developer is right, until the players prove otherwise.)

B ) If you don't agree with the rules, you are a scrub. He says it, pretty much flat out in his definition of what a scrub is. The scrub cries foul and says something is unfair. Xyro, one of Texas' top TOs, thinks Metaknight, an entire character, is unfair. He also thinks the IC grabs are unfair. He, aside from being a top TO, is one of Texas' top Samus players. He's a good player, and Sirlin would call him a scrub.

He might complain about those things, but I'm sure he uses a wide variety of tactics that many other players (including myself) would initially call cheap or unfair if we didn't know better. He does not have an arbitrary set of rules in his mind that he adheres to. He plays to win (or else he wouldn't be good).

C ) According to that quotation, "play to win" is a mindset, a philosophy. Anyone who doesn't agree needs a pro to reform them by beating them. But, according to "play to win", if you're in a tournament match and you DON'T do everything at your disposal to win, you're not really playing to win. Forget if you have no chance of losing because you're playing someone who has never been to a tournament before; you had better pick D3 and chain grab against a wall for 7 minutes, because that's the easiest way to win (it's a "brick wall", according to Sirlin). That kind of behavior makes people not want to play.

It makes some people not want to play. It makes other people - people that aren't scrubs - want to play harder. BardicKnowledge's brother, newt, beat me 20 times in a row as Vega against my Fei-Long. He used the same tactic over and over again. Did this make me want to stop playing? No, of course not. It made me want to play him MORE and figure out how to beat him, and talk to other Vega/Fei-Long players to understand the matchup more. That's the difference between me and a scrub.

In Heroes of Newerth, I initially acted like a scrub when my team lost to a hero called Plague Rider. None of us had encountered him, and his ultimate attack seemed very unfair. At first I said I refused to play against Plague Rider. Classic scrub behavior. In top-tier competitive matches, Plague Rider is played constantly, and if I ever wanted to improve, I would need to practice against him (and playing as him.) I eventually decided to stop being a scrub, and, fast-forwarding to several months later, I know exactly how to counter Plague Rider, and how to counter those counters. I'm a better player because of it.

D ) This entire thread is about sportsmanship, remember? Sirlin's atricles advocate thinking that you have a superior mindset to other people, and history (human history, not just gaming history) proves that people who think they are intrinsically better in any capacity will mistreat people they consider to be beneath them. A pro player who believes in the scrub mentality will, without fail, act in an unsportsmanlike manner. The fact of the matter is that I have proof to this (sure, you have to take my word, but I have staff that will back me up here); you have yet to even admit you've ever been to a live tournament.

That's funny, because while people like Bardic and I certainly believe in playing to win, and the concept that scrubs exist, we are VERY good sports and never talk down to people when we play TF2, HoN or Street Fighter. In fact, playing with us is actually a great deal of fun as basically anyone who has can attest. I HAVE been to tournaments of various different kinds of games (Magic, Street Fighter) and never encountered the sort of immaturity that you're describing. Nor do I act like that. Having watched videos of the biggest fighting game tournament in the U.S., EVO, I can also safely say that it doesn't occur there either. Players at this high level are quite nice, treating their opponents with respect, shaking hands before and after a match, etc.

It sounds to me like the Smash community is simply immature, and the tournaments you've gone to are filled with assholes. People like that will generally act like that no matter what and justify it any way they can. If you're REALLY playing to win, you won't play against people that are far worse than you. If you do end up playing such a match - and it's for fun - you will go easy on your opponent and try to teach them, so that you can have a better opponent later. If it's for money (tournament), then you might play hard, but again you gain nothing from berating or mocking them, as you don't get any better from the match and you WANT more good opponents.

So really the key problem in your logic is this:

* People, by their nature, will most likely treat people they are taught are inferior like crap

This just isn't really true among mature gamers, who tend to be actually decent and sportsmanlike. Case-in-point, the best fighting game players in the world are not assholes at all, but by your logic, they should be the biggest ones.

[JackKieser]

*sigh* You keep forgetting really important things, and it seems that I'll have to quote you for you to see them.

He outlines as good a set of ban criteria as one could possibly make. Also, the assumption that the majority of people playing a game is right by default is pretty hard to deny (though actually what Sirlin is REALLY saying is that by default, the developer is right, until the players prove otherwise.)

I think history has taught us that the majority isn't always right, if we can even agree on what right is (after all, who says an Akuma-only SF isn't a good game? It depends on the subjective definition of a "good game").

He might complain about those things, but I'm sure he uses a wide variety of tactics that many other players (including myself) would initially call cheap or unfair if we didn't know better. He does not have an arbitrary set of rules in his mind that he adheres to. He plays to win (or else he wouldn't be good).

...so you're trying to tell me that he's a good player because he plays to win? Ok, there are some serious problems here.

First of all, we're talking about Samus here. vBrawl Samus is trash, at best. He plays her not because she's good (like a true Sirlinite would do), but because he likes her, even though she's bad. That's NOT playing to win. Even so, Samus doesn't even really have "cheap" stuff (besides her projectile spam, which is ok in Brawl). Not to mention, he hosts entire tournaments that ban IC grabs (or at least limits them) and outright ban Metaknight. So... yeah. He's really not playing to win, by Sirlin's definition, and he's certainly not facilitating it with his TO policies.

And even if he was, who are you (or who is Sirlin, for that matter) to make the judgment that he wouldn't be good if he wasn't a Sirlinite? Where's your proof for that lofty statement? There are plenty of good players (not A-tier, multi-hundred $ winners, mind you, but good players nonetheless) that don't follow Sirlin's philosophy of always taking the easiest, most profitable route to a win. There are also plenty of trash players who only pick Metaknight because he's S-tier and still get their asses kicked. "Play to win" =/= "good player".

It makes some people not want to play. It makes other people - people that aren't scrubs - want to play harder. BardicKnowledge's brother, newt, beat me 20 times in a row as Vega against my Fei-Long. He used the same tactic over and over again. Did this make me want to stop playing? No, of course not. It made me want to play him MORE and figure out how to beat him, and talk to other Vega/Fei-Long players to understand the matchup more. That's the difference between me and a scrub.

In Heroes of Newerth, I initially acted like a scrub when my team lost to a hero called Plague Rider. None of us had encountered him, and his ultimate attack seemed very unfair. At first I said I refused to play against Plague Rider. Classic scrub behavior. In top-tier competitive matches, Plague Rider is played constantly, and if I ever wanted to improve, I would need to practice against him (and playing as him.) I eventually decided to stop being a scrub, and, fast-forwarding to several months later, I know exactly how to counter Plague Rider, and how to counter those counters. I'm a better player because of it.

First of all, you weren't acting like a "scrub"; you were acting like someone treated unfairly (or someone who perceived unfairness). And the only reason you stopped that was because:

* You're hard-headed

* You learned about the game, instead of staying ignorant

Good for you; not everyone is lucky enough to be as stubborn as you / have your wealth of info. Some people need some help to be taught things and can't / won't find things out alone... Oh, if only there were people who already possessed the knowledge and were willing to teach it...

OH, WAI-

That's funny, because while people like Bardic and I certainly believe in playing to win, and the concept that scrubs exist, we are VERY good sports and never talk down to people when we play TF2, HoN or Street Fighter. In fact, playing with us is actually a great deal of fun as basically anyone who has can attest. I HAVE been to tournaments of various different kinds of games (Magic, Street Fighter) and never encountered the sort of immaturity that you're describing. Nor do I act like that. Having watched videos of the biggest fighting game tournament in the U.S., EVO, I can also safely say that it doesn't occur there either. Players at this high level are quite nice, treating their opponents with respect, shaking hands before and after a match, etc.

It sounds to me like the Smash community is simply immature, and the tournaments you've gone to are filled with assholes. People like that will generally act like that no matter what and justify it any way they can. If you're REALLY playing to win, you won't play against people that are far worse than you. If you do end up playing such a match - and it's for fun - you will go easy on your opponent and try to teach them, so that you can have a better opponent later. If it's for money (tournament), then you might play hard, but again you gain nothing from berating or mocking them, as you don't get any better from the match and you WANT more good opponents.

Again, you speak as if you've ever been to a live tournament. You've watched videos from EVO? You mean carefully edited videos making EVO out to be the Mecca of fighters in an attempt to draw even more people next year? Yeah... go to EVO.

I'll say it one more time, and if I'm not answered again, I'm just going to stop debating with you, because you're obviously not listening:

Name the large-scale tournament you've gone to that had such a super-de-duper pool of pro competitive players who admitted to being devout Sirlinites.

If you can't, then at least have the intellectual honesty to admit you're making a lot of assumptions here.

This just isn't really true among mature gamers, who tend to be actually decent and sportsmanlike. Case-in-point, the best fighting game players in the world are not assholes at all, but by your logic, they should be the biggest ones.

All this means is that emotionally mature people tend not to be assholes. Wow. Really? I wasn't aware.

You forget to mention that you don't need to be emotionally mature to be a Sirlinite; that's nowhere in the requirements. All you need to be a Sirlinite is an unwavering belief that winning is the most important aspect of competition. Well, that and the belief that you're intrinsically better than everyone who disagrees with your ruleset.

Oh, and I notice you still didn't refer to that quotation; don't think I didn't notice that.

EDIT: I noticed some things that I forgot to address earlier; I'll make up for that now.

1 ) In post #62, you state that playing lesser players won't get you any better; Sirlin explicitly explains the benefits of playing lesser players in his "Playing to Learn" article. Also, the nature of a bracket dictates that, at some point, you will fight someone worse (or better) than you. Sportsmanlike conduct would be not demoralizing them when you clearly don't have to. I'm sure you wouldn't need to be absolutely devastated in order to know you need to get better, right?

2 ) Also in post #62, you say that SF players don't withhold tactics, and that Sirlin never says to do so. He never explicitly says to do so, sure, but again, that's not what happens. What really happens is that pro players share tactics with each other, and exclude the scrubs. Forums are the exception, since once someone posts a tactic, it's free for everyone to see. Doesn't mean a pro player spamming throws is going to take the "scrub" player under his wing after the tournament and teach him "l33t skill no. 14", especially after the player complains about the throwing; the pro player is just going to label him as a scrub, think it's a lost cause, remember that he's better on a moral level, and go to his next match / play with his pro buddies.

3 ) In post #64, technically, the developer is right by default, until the players disagree; anything can be justified within Sirlinist doctrine.

They were tiny things, but things I thought important to at least note.

[Poke'G]

In my opinion, no player who plays to win goes around looking for casual players and telling them how bad they are. To the contrary, casual players come to tournaments and when they lose, accuse their opponent of being a douche. The agression comes from the casual, not the other way around.

Bullshit. Yes casual players can be asses too by whining in a tournament where they have no shot. I won't deny this happens, but competitive players are far from idle victims like you think.

As an anecdotal example, I knew a pair of kids in college who were competitive Super Smash Bros Melee players. They actually traveled to tournaments and played for prize money and stuff. That's all well and good. But our group of friends were casual Melee players; we'd play for fun. But when they'd play with us (which was often, because they liked playing Melee and they'd join us when they saw us playing), they still played to win. They were undoubtedly better than us -- they would dominate the field, complaining all the while about how we were playing on stupid levels (ie not Final Destination or Battlefield), and that using items were dumb because they were pure luck, etc etc. And while they're doing this they're wave dashing around and only using top-tier characters and using I don't even know what other tricks to kick our asses seven ways from Sunday.

We stopped letting them play with us after not-too-particularly-long. Because it wasn't fun. But here's the thing: a competitive player can ruin a scrub's game by playing competitively, but the reverse is not true. A scrub in a tournament does not ruin the tournament; they just get knocked out and play moves on. A competitive player in a casual gaming session, however, does ruin the casual gaming.

This is completely true. It's hard running events for fun with a group of friends or non gaming club with an open invite, because there are competitive players who seek these outings to show off. It happened time and time again at college, to the point where it became nearly impossible to set up casual gaming get togethers because no casual player would want to play in light of the inevitable pros that would show up to dominate just because. People stopped playing simply because they thought they sucked at the game and there was no point.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Also, helllooooooo PPR.

[BardicKnowledge]

But there's a big difference between an uneducated player and a "scrub". The uneducated player isn't very good, but wants to improve and learn the game more. They don't complain about every obstacle that they encounter and call everything "cheap", rather they strive to get better. You can be bad and not be a scrub.

I'd just like to add that it's all about attitude and has very little to do with skill level. Someone who whips me 9-0 in SF2, and then complains that I used "cheap" tactics to eke out one win in 10 is a scrub, despite the fact that statistically, he (she) is a better player than me.

Similarly, one of my groomsmen had to ask me the difference in motion between a fireball and a dragon punch last I played with him. After I explained it, he had control over the two moves, which allowed him to play a few mindgames, and even rarely win a round or two. He still falls into very readable patterns 95% of the time and therefore loses to me, but his attitude makes him worth playing with.

Edit (after reading Jack's above):

IC infinites have a few important weaknesses. First, the IC's have shit grab range. Second, you need both Climbers to do them, and separating them stops the grab (thanks to Nana's craptastic AI). Third, they are tough to time right and have different timings on different characters. Add all these up and the IC infinites can definitely be beaten (even if they can potentially result in a 0-death on the entire cast-the IC's).

If ANY noob who does not know the above info gets IC grabbed, I guarantee you, $1000 on the table right now, I'll put it on PayPal, they will cry foul. You can't ignore that. Unless they already read Sirlin (and fell to his wiles), they'll think that's broken, and it's logical that they should! A OHKO grab? In a DEFENSIVE game? That takes away ALL player control? Any logical person, not knowing the weaknesses, would complain about that.

Someone alone at a tournament with no iPhone (or knowledge of WHERE to go to get tourney-grade info) is truly at a disadvantage here. That being said, if they didn't know anything about it, they probably weren't ready to show up to a tournament the scale of which you're talking about and win, Jack. Still, it DOES suck getting whipped by something you've never seen before, and I can attest to that personally. Especially when you're alone at an event and you don't have any friends along.

But, being beaten into the ground and mocked afterward, especially when all you're doing is (basically) asking how something that seems (to you) to be broken is allowed? Yeah, that's enough to make anyone quit playing out of sheer frustration / shame.

First of all, anyone who goes out of their way to mock you for losing against them in a tourney is an asshole, plain and simple. That being said, when it's my round in a tourney (especially when money is on the line) I play for keeps and show no mercy. Even if I beat you without losing a stock, I wouldn't go out of my way to rub it in your face though. I figure that the guy I beat just did me a favor by shoving me up a bracket

Go to a 300-man tournament some time, one with a 15$ buy in and a 1000$ sponsorship on the line. Because I've hosted one of those. WHOBO at Anime Matsuri '09. Look it up. I was recording matches there, aside from running tournaments; I saw a lot. Pros at tournaments are dicks, for the most part. They are part of an exclusive club, and they are taught by people like Sirlin that, not because of their skill, but because of their mindset (play to win), they are intrinsically better than others (and you still haven't, btw, refuted that quotation; try to justify how that isn't exclusionary fanaticism, please). Put 1500$ on the line, and see how people act. Go ahead.

While I've never played at a tournament quite that large or for that much money, I have definitely been to cash-prize tourneys in various games, and yes 95% of the people I didn't know were absolute dicks to everyone else. I definitely agree that when cash is on the line, people are cocks. However, I don't see how Sirlin encourages this, as he does not address behavior on the tourney floor / post-match.

There are plenty of people that HATE Brawl and still play in tournaments. Seriously. People that detest Brawl as a game that is killing off a superior game in Melee. They still play Brawl not because they enjoy it, but because it makes them money. Don't try to make the assertion that everyone who ascribes to Sirlin's teachings also loves to play their respective game, because that's wishful thinking.

While I'm also aware of this (people playing games they hate anyway), Sirlin neither encourages it nor discourages it. Also, I feel (though I have no evidence) that this problem affects the Smash community more than it does other fighting game groups.

Flat out, Sirlin's own writings assert (again, explicitly) that if you complain about anything that seems cheap to you, you are a scrub and need spiritual reformation. That is disingenuous at best. You say that you can be bad and not be a scrub? Yeah, those are the people who already agree with Sirlin. People can learn and get better and still not agree that taking complete control away from a player is fair (IC grabs); to Sirlin, they're still scrubs. So, to him, you can be bad and not be a scrub, but you can be good and still be a scrub, too. It's a no win... unless you agree with Sirlin, of course.

I'd make an addendum to Sirlin's "majority rule" that if there is a SIGNIFICANT minority of pro-level players that feel something is broken, then it's worth looking into for a ban. For instance, I'm assuming you're a much, MUCH better Smash player than me Jack. But as you know, if I pick Metaknight and do nothing but my tornado and Up+B, my chances of getting a win out of you suddenly go up by a crapload relative to my actual skill (Lucas is my main, incidentally).

This leads me to close with two points. First of all, the gaming community at large is VERY rarely privy to discussion of why and how something is banned. Hell, at Smashboards, we can't even view the SBR discussion threads on issues such as Metaknight / IC infinites. I'm not saying that every 6-year old with a computer needs to be able to post in there, but separating site admin forums from legitimate meta-game debate, and making all members be able to VIEW the debate half of it would only improve the community.

Second, I think we're at an impasse due to terminology. There's a difference in my mind between someone reacting to the IC infinite (my best example, thanks Jack) and saying "Damn, that sucks balls. So cheap...I wish I knew about it in advance" and "Damn, that's so cheap -- it shouldn't be allowed". One of them is legitimately being frustrated (and rightfully so, as I was once the victim of said grab and it does indeed suck). The second is someone of the opinion that the player broke the rules in doing it...which to any TO, referee, or observer, is obviously not the case.

Oh, and person X banning MK or IC infinites at their tourneys is just fine. It doesn't disagree with Sirlin specifically -- how do you think the competitive community eventually decided to ban ST Akuma? They had to experiment with the bans to see if there is indeed a richer game beneath the surface. That's all that the TO's choosing to play without MK or without ICgrabs are doing, and everyone SHOULD be in favor of it, at least over the short term.

[zircon]

Name the large-scale tournament you've gone to that had such a super-de-duper pool of pro competitive players who admitted to being devout Sirlinites.

I haven't been to any large-scale tournaments like EVO, and that's not really relevant to the debate. However, on SRK, he's pretty well-respected by a lot of the top-tier players there. The only times I've ever seen him disrespected by great players is because of his views on new fighting games like SF4 and BlazBlue, not because of Playing to Win. If you read his guides/thoughts/writeups on SF, he is in fact tight with a lot of the top SF players, which is why he consulted with so many of them while rebalancing HDR.

What I'd like to ask you is this; do you actually think the best players in competitive games don't play to win? In other words, do you think the best baseball players have a made-up set of rules in their head, not accepted by the rest of the community and not written into the rules of the game? Do you think ANY major league baseball player thinks to themselves, "It's so cheap to steal a base - I won't do it"? Do you think the best SF players are like that? Do you think guys like Daigo, Alex Valle or Justin Wong EVER for a second say "I won't use that combo, it does so much damage and is so hard to predict!"

You've only given one example of a "good" Smash player who doesn't believe in IC loops, but really, how common is it that great players say "I'm not going to pick this character; he's too cheap?" That's behavior I just about ONLY see in weaker players. It sounds like you are the one that has little competitive experience. The best players play to win. It's undeniable. Sirlin didn't invent this philosophy, he merely explained it so people who were having trouble getting to the next level could get better by changing their mindset. And, if you read his post-book comments, he's gotten tons of positive feedback from people across the board in every competitive gaming community about how true his words are.

Also, it's funny that you should say that Sirlin wouldn't support picking a weaker character like Samus. You do know that in SF tournaments, he tended to pick underpicked characters, rather than the commonly "top tier" guys? He has written at length about how his playstyle (learning many characters, exploring all the tricks) is often at odds with how the best play (learning one character and exploiting their max potential.) Oh, and in HD Remix, his top character, which he brought to tournaments, is Fei Long, considered to be one of the worst in the game.

All you need to be a Sirlinite is an unwavering belief that winning is the most important aspect of competition. Well, that and the belief that you're intrinsically better than everyone who disagrees with your ruleset.

This argument is honestly boiling down to this point right here. NOWHERE does Sirlin say that you need to believe you're "intrinsically better" than scrubs, and it's just pure B.S.

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.

So you keep referencing this quote, and I don't see what's wrong with it. He's pointing out that the scrub has these arbitrary personalrules, which, as I've established, the best of any game or sport simply don't have (you don't win by handicapping yourself.) That's because you don't become the best by not trying to win.

Have you ever read a fighting game instruction manual? Or a board game? You know that section that says "Goal" or "Objective"? Think about how you would tell someone else how a fighting game works. "Your goal is to reduce the other guy's HP to 0." By default, the GOAL OF THE GAME IS TO WIN. The goal of the game is not to reduce YOUR HP to 0. THAT'S why he's saying the objective of "playing to win" is good, right and true, because that's intrinsic to the nature of games. The goal of the game is to destroy your opponent's base, or to score more runs, or to meet some other victory condition.

Nonetheless, he's absolutely not saying that YOU are better than the scrub. He's saying your OBJECTIVE is. People that don't understand the difference are like Atomic Dog from PPR, who can't fathom a disagreement on a subject without personally attacking the person holding the view (ie. "You believe in abortion? Not only is your view wrong, but I am also better than you.")

[JackKieser]

Someone alone at a tournament with no iPhone (or knowledge of WHERE to go to get tourney-grade info) is truly at a disadvantage here. That being said, if they didn't know anything about it, they probably weren't ready to show up to a tournament the scale of which you're talking about and win, Jack. Still, it DOES suck getting whipped by something you've never seen before, and I can attest to that personally. Especially when you're alone at an event and you don't have any friends along.

Most first-time players aren't "ready" to compete. When I first went to a Melee tourney, I had been playing Melee for 5 years against one of my close gaming friends competitively. I mained Link (because I love Link as a character), and he mained Falco. I hate Falco. With a passion reserved for the deepest, most fiery pits of Hael. The reason I hate him is because his blasters are so OP vs. Link; I'd never tell him not to use them, but it doesn't mean the didn't piss me off. So, when I got good enough to beat him consistently, I went to a Melee tournament hosted at my college thinking I was going to stand a chance. I had never even HEARD of SWF at this point; it was obvious to anyone else that I would get owned.

This little story is important for a few reasons:

First, the noob player usually has an overinflated sense of self. That's to be expected, though; when you're good amongst a group of people, it makes sense (to them) to extrapolate that to a larger group of people (within reason). What sucks is that pro players don't remember being this way themselves and treat noob players like trash for even considering going to a tournament without 5 months of lurking on a forum they didn't even know existed.

Second, there is a BIG difference between "acceptance" and "tolerance". I tolerated Falco's lasers (still do, too). I would never seriously want them banned, but that doesn't mean that my friend not using them for a few matches wouldn't have helped me learn, nor that they aren't still incredibly cheap vs Link. I think Mr. Garrison said it best on South Park's "Museum of Tolerance" episode:

"You tolerate a crying baby or you tolerate a bad cold; doesn't mean it can't still piss you off!"

Players are in no way required to accept anything. IC grabs, D3's chain throws, Falco's lasers, Meta's 'Nado... they're all legal, but that doesn't mean they aren't total BS. No one is required to accept those and never ever get pissed by them to be a decent person.

First of all, anyone who goes out of their way to mock you for losing against them in a tourney is an asshole, plain and simple. That being said, when it's my round in a tourney (especially when money is on the line) I play for keeps and show no mercy. Even if I beat you without losing a stock, I wouldn't go out of my way to rub it in your face though. I figure that the guy I beat just did me a favor by shoving me up a bracket

Well, if that's how you play, then be prepared to be labeled as an asshole. If it's obvious that people play to have fun first and foremost, and that you're not going to lose, and that you're already having fun, why on earth would you purposefully hammer someone into the ground and take away his fun, too? Because money is on the line? Because it's a tournament? You're going to win anyway. If your opponent is bracket fodder, why would you think it's ok to take away his fun just because he's less skilled than you? The worst case scenario here is that your action force a player away from the game by showing him the "futility" of playing and showing him how big of dicks the community is made of. Best case is you motivate him, but how many people really think on that mature of a level? Christ, use the opportunity to talk to the guy during the match. Explain that it's not smart to take D3 to Corneria's wing because of the chain grab, don't just lure him there and laugh at him (note, I'm not sayin YOU'D laugh at him, but either way, it's not necessary)!

While I've never played at a tournament quite that large or for that much money, I have definitely been to cash-prize tourneys in various games, and yes 95% of the people I didn't know were absolute dicks to everyone else. I definitely agree that when cash is on the line, people are cocks. However, I don't see how Sirlin encourages this, as he does not address behavior on the tourney floor / post-match.

Sirlin encourages this by his "competitive players are holier-than-thou" attitude as referenced by his own writings. Why are you guys ignoring human nature? He doesn't have to write a chapter on purposefully being a dick at a tournament to influence it! The Pope doesn't tell people to bomb abortion clinics, but that doesn't mean he's not influencing people to do so.

While I'm also aware of this (people playing games they hate anyway), Sirlin neither encourages it nor discourages it. Also, I feel (though I have no evidence) that this problem affects the Smash community more than it does other fighting game groups.

I'll give you that this is a (mainly) Smash-related problem, because of the Brawl / Melee relationship. Also, it's just so easy to make money in Brawl.

I'd make an addendum to Sirlin's "majority rule" that if there is a SIGNIFICANT minority of pro-level players that feel something is broken, then it's worth looking into for a ban. For instance, I'm assuming you're a much, MUCH better Smash player than me Jack. But as you know, if I pick Metaknight and do nothing but my tornado and Up+B, my chances of getting a win out of you suddenly go up by a crapload relative to my actual skill (Lucas is my main, incidentally).

This leads me to close with two points. First of all, the gaming community at large is VERY rarely privy to discussion of why and how something is banned. Hell, at Smashboards, we can't even view the SBR discussion threads on issues such as Metaknight / IC infinites. I'm not saying that every 6-year old with a computer needs to be able to post in there, but separating site admin forums from legitimate meta-game debate, and making all members be able to VIEW the debate half of it would only improve the community.

Second, I think we're at an impasse due to terminology. There's a difference in my mind between someone reacting to the IC infinite (my best example, thanks Jack) and saying "Damn, that sucks balls. So cheap...I wish I knew about it in advance" and "Damn, that's so cheap -- it shouldn't be allowed". One of them is legitimately being frustrated (and rightfully so, as I was once the victim of said grab and it does indeed suck). The second is someone of the opinion that the player broke the rules in doing it...which to any TO, referee, or observer, is obviously not the case.

First, I'd like to say that I agree that SWF's Shadowy Board of Pro Players, *ahem* I mean the Smash Back Room, is indeed a dumb way to do things (I always believe that disinformation is a bad thing, though). I've said so in a couple of threads there... and subsequently got flamed to hell for challenging the status quo. So... there you go.

Second, show any player the IC infinite, and they will want to be able to do it, too. Any player will. Hell, I'm sure all the pros who can't wish they could, too. So, the thoughts "I wish I knew" and "it shouldn't be allowed" are not mutually exclusive. Even if they were, though, a player is well within his rights to legitimately not believe something should be allowed. Even so, most times, thinking like that is due to a mixture of feeling cheated and (and the "and" is important) not being educated to the weaknesses of the tech. If we, as competitive players, don't want to make the effort to dispel the misinformation, how do we expect people to know the truth? We're the ones with the info, and we're refusing to use it! Teach a noob player; it's your duty as a pro player to dispel the lies about your own community.

Oh, and person X banning MK or IC infinites at their tourneys is just fine. It doesn't disagree with Sirlin specifically -- how do you think the competitive community eventually decided to ban ST Akuma? They had to experiment with the bans to see if there is indeed a richer game beneath the surface. That's all that the TO's choosing to play without MK or without ICgrabs are doing, and everyone SHOULD be in favor of it, at least over the short term.

Sure, we know that now. In retrospect, people are rarely "scrubs". As of now, though, Xyro is a scrub, according to Sirlin. He's playing with a pre-defined set of rules in his head (and worse, is using his TO status to force other players to play by his rules, too!). His justification is irrelevant; that is the definition of "scrub behavior", according to Sirlin's own writings. If he doesn't want to be considered a scrub, by Sirlinist doctrine, Xyro himself has to prove why he's right; then he won't be a scrub.

[JackKieser]

Sorry for the double post; my original post was 2000 characters too long, .

I haven't been to any large-scale tournaments like EVO, and that's not really relevant to the debate. However, on SRK, he's pretty well-respected by a lot of the top-tier players there. The only times I've ever seen him disrespected by great players is because of his views on new fighting games like SF4 and BlazBlue, not because of Playing to Win. If you read his guides/thoughts/writeups on SF, he is in fact tight with a lot of the top SF players, which is why he consulted with so many of them while rebalancing HDR.

Irrelevant. I don't care how respected he is. Half the country respects Bush 43 (the red people); doesn't mean his rationale for war wasn't completely retarded. Also, if you haven't been to any large-scale tournaments, stop talking about player behavior like you have any clue what's going on. I don't claim to know how you play in your OCR TF2 server because I've never been there. You've never been to a tournament, so stop talking like you've personally witnessed a room of 300 people starved for 1500$ acting like saints. You're tournament attendance may not be relevant to the concept of sportsmanship, but it certainly is relevant to your qualifications for even debating the subject.

What I'd like to ask you is this; do you actually think the best players in competitive games don't play to win? In other words, do you think the best baseball players have a made-up set of rules in their head, not accepted by the rest of the community and not written into the rules of the game? Do you think ANY major league baseball player thinks to themselves, "It's so cheap to steal a base - I won't do it"? Do you think the best SF players are like that? Do you think guys like Daigo, Alex Valle or Justin Wong EVER for a second say "I won't use that combo, it does so much damage and is so hard to predict!"

I think wanting to win and adopting Sirlinist doctrine are two different things. "Playing to win" is a mindset created by making a distinction between your motivations and another player's motivations, and then purposefully distinguishing yourself as morally superior. I can play a game with the intention of winning and still not believe in "scrubs" or Sirlinist doctrine. I seriously doubt Kobe is going around calling other players "scrubs". Meanwhile, pro gamers are going around calling people "scrubs". What's the difference? Kobe isn't taught Sirlinist doctrine, and gamers are.

You've only given one example of a "good" Smash player who doesn't believe in IC loops, but really, how common is it that great players say "I'm not going to pick this character; he's too cheap?" That's behavior I just about ONLY see in weaker players. It sounds like you are the one that has little competitive experience. The best players play to win. It's undeniable. Sirlin didn't invent this philosophy, he merely explained it so people who were having trouble getting to the next level could get better by changing their mindset. And, if you read his post-book comments, he's gotten tons of positive feedback from people across the board in every competitive gaming community about how true his words are.

There are many reasons not to pick a character; a good number of pros won't play Metaknight because they want him banned (although one, Overswarm, played him as gay as possible to get him banned, too ). Either way, it's really irrelevant. The only thing that makes one player weaker than another is skill level. THIS IS SIRLIN'S PROBLEM, AND YOUR PROBLEM. I don't care what philosophy you have; you can be pacifist and refuse to fight for all I care. If you have more skill than me and can beat me in combat, you are better; mindset, motivation, and philosophy is totally irrelevant to who has more skill. Where do you get off saying that someone who has different motivations than you is a weaker player (or person)?

Also, (again) millions of people give Bush 43 positive reviews, too. Again, if you knew anything about intellectual honesty and logical debate, you'd know that a million, a billion, every person on the planet could agree on something... but that doesn't make them right.

Also, it's funny that you should say that Sirlin wouldn't support picking a weaker character like Samus. You do know that in SF tournaments, he tended to pick underpicked characters, rather than the commonly "top tier" guys? He has written at length about how his playstyle (learning many characters, exploring all the tricks) is often at odds with how the best play (learning one character and exploiting their max potential.) Oh, and in HD Remix, his top character, which he brought to tournaments, is Fei Long, considered to be one of the worst in the game.

...so? He plays crap characters for shock value, hoping that his opponents won't know the matchup (and he probably enjoys playing them more, too). He's a scrub by his own definition. Unless he's playing those characters intently to be able to play every single character at top level, he's restricting himself to characters that don't give him the highest statistical chance of winning. That. Is. Not. Playing. To. Win.

This argument is honestly boiling down to this point right here. NOWHERE does Sirlin say that you need to believe you're "intrinsically better" than scrubs, and it's just pure B.S.

"Your way is good, and right, and true..." TELL ME THAT DOESN'T MEAN SOMEONE IS BETTER THAN SOMEONE ELSE!

So you keep referencing this quote, and I don't see what's wrong with it. He's pointing out that the scrub has these arbitrary personalrules, which, as I've established, the best of any game or sport simply don't have (you don't win by handicapping yourself.) That's because you don't become the best by not trying to win.

Not in that quotation, he's not. In that quotation, he's pointing out that the Sirlinite is morally superior to the "scrub" and that the Sirlinite has a moral obligation to prove the scrub wrong (hell, to prove any dissenter wrong) by beating them in a fight. The very words "good, and right, and true" are the important words here.

Have you ever read a fighting game instruction manual? Or a board game? You know that section that says "Goal" or "Objective"? Think about how you would tell someone else how a fighting game works. "Your goal is to reduce the other guy's HP to 0." By default, the GOAL OF THE GAME IS TO WIN. The goal of the game is not to reduce YOUR HP to 0. THAT'S why he's saying the objective of "playing to win" is good, right and true, because that's intrinsic to the nature of games. The goal of the game is to destroy your opponent's base, or to score more runs, or to meet some other victory condition.

NO ONE plays a game and does not intend to win, even the "scrub"; that's why he's objecting in the first place, to better his chances of winning! You really believe that someone who doesn't follow Sirlinist doctrine doesn't play with the objective of winning? Really? Have you ever even read a holy text? They write the same way. I'm calling this doctrine for a reason; because Sirlin's writings go WAY past "winning should be your objective, and you shouldn't hold yourself back" to outright dogma. It's a philosophy that actively teaches moral superiority. You seem intent on denying this, even though the words are staring you in the face. No one plays with the intention of losing, and his even SUGGESTING that people, especially people at tournaments, would do so is disingenuous at best, and an outright lie at worst.

Nonetheless, he's absolutely not saying that YOU are better than the scrub. He's saying your OBJECTIVE is. People that don't understand the difference are like Atomic Dog from PPR, who can't fathom a disagreement on a subject without personally attacking the person holding the view (ie. "You believe in abortion? Not only is your view wrong, but I am also better than you.")

Your objective is no different! He's not saying the objectives are different because they aren't. The objectives of all parties is always to win the match. What he's asserting is that your mindset is superior, and that, by default, means that you are morally superior. There is nothing to separate there.

[Native Jovian]

You're saying playing to win is DIFFERENT than "playing for fun", but it isn't. Games are fun. The whole point of them is entertainment. So, everyone that plays is having fun regardless. However, it's still MORE fun to get better at a game or sport, and try to win at it.

No.

This is the difference between competitive players and casual players, which I think you're failing to grasp. You're a competitive player; you talk about losing ten matches in a row to someone using the exact same tactics the whole time and wanting to play more so you can figure out how to win, because you're a competitive player and you want to figure out how to compete more successfully.

A casual player doesn't think this way. A casual player thinks "goddamnit, this is boring, frustrating, and humiliating, I don't want to do this anymore". And you cannot tell them that they're wrong, because they ARE getting bored, frustrated, and humiliated. They're not having fun. Which is bad.

[BardicKnowledge]

First of all, anyone who goes out of their way to mock you for losing against them in a tourney is an asshole, plain and simple. That being said, when it's my round in a tourney (especially when money is on the line) I play for keeps and show no mercy. Even if I beat you without losing a stock, I wouldn't go out of my way to rub it in your face though. I figure that the guy I beat just did me a favor by shoving me up a bracket

Well, if that's how you play, then be prepared to be labeled as an asshole. If it's obvious that people play to have fun first and foremost, and that you're not going to lose, and that you're already having fun, why on earth would you purposefully hammer someone into the ground and take away his fun, too? Because money is on the line? Because it's a tournament? You're going to win anyway. If your opponent is bracket fodder, why would you think it's ok to take away his fun just because he's less skilled than you? The worst case scenario here is that your action force a player away from the game by showing him the "futility" of playing and showing him how big of dicks the community is made of. Best case is you motivate him, but how many people really think on that mature of a level? Christ, use the opportunity to talk to the guy during the match. Explain that it's not smart to take D3 to Corneria's wing because of the chain grab, don't just lure him there and laugh at him (note, I'm not sayin YOU'D laugh at him, but either way, it's not necessary)!

I'm perfectly willing to sandbag a little during casuals while I wait for my round -- even give out helpful advice if they're up for receiving it. I'd never completely floor someone outside of tourney play. That being said, when I'm up when it counts, I spend very little time assessing the relative skill of my opponent outside of "he's currently doing something that endangers me / allows me an opening" or "based on the first round / knowledge gained during play, I THINK he will be doing X or Y, which is countered by option Z." Obviously if there is an extremely large gap in skill I'll notice, but as I personally am neither at the highest echelons of play nor at the bottom rungs of the tourney ladder, I have played very few rounds where someone is vastly worse than me to the point of it being relaxing.

First, I'd like to say that I agree that SWF's Shadowy Board of Pro Players, *ahem* I mean the Smash Back Room, is indeed a dumb way to do things (I always believe that disinformation is a bad thing, though). I've said so in a couple of threads there... and subsequently got flamed to hell for challenging the status quo. So... there you go.

Nothing to debate here, but it's nice to know that someone active over at SWF (incidentally, I don't post there because the vast majority of the community are jerks IMO) agrees with me.

Second, show any player the IC infinite, and they will want to be able to do it, too. Any player will. Hell, I'm sure all the pros who can't wish they could, too. So, the thoughts "I wish I knew" and "it shouldn't be allowed" are not mutually exclusive. Even if they were, though, a player is well within his rights to legitimately not believe something should be allowed. Even so, most times, thinking like that is due to a mixture of feeling cheated and (and the "and" is important) not being educated to the weaknesses of the tech. If we, as competitive players, don't want to make the effort to dispel the misinformation, how do we expect people to know the truth? We're the ones with the info, and we're refusing to use it! Teach a noob player; it's your duty as a pro player to dispel the lies about your own community.

I completely advocate the sharing of techniques after a round is over. In no way should anyone, regardless of their attitude / philosophy about competitive gaming, expect a player with a secret (or trick he believes is secret) spoil it before he has a chance to play with it. Case in point: HDR gave Ryu a fake fireball which recovers MUCH faster than his original one, and links into any of his special moves with an almost Marvel feel to it. At least three times I've told zircon that I had "something new" to show them about it. By which I meant that I was going to whip him once with it before giving out the details. Two of three times I did, and then shared (time three's mindgame wasn't as good ) what I had just done.

IMO it is the responsibility of top-level players (or in my case, players at the top level of a smaller group -- OCR) to share the new things they discover their characters to be capable of at some point. It enhances the game and allows a wider variety of tactical decisions for all characters. If you don't share your "secrets" after a tourney / event, then you're being selfish at the expense of the quality of the game you're making money playing.

Sure, we know that now. In retrospect, people are rarely "scrubs". As of now, though, Xyro is a scrub, according to Sirlin. He's playing with a pre-defined set of rules in his head (and worse, is using his TO status to force other players to play by his rules, too!). His justification is irrelevant; that is the definition of "scrub behavior", according to Sirlin's own writings. If he doesn't want to be considered a scrub, by Sirlinist doctrine, Xyro himself has to prove why he's right; then he won't be a scrub.

Anyone truly adopting Sirlin's line of thinking wouldn't question a TO about their choice of rules at their own event. Either you agreed to the rules beforehand, or you didn't show up. Saying that something isn't fair e.g. "Banning MK isn't fair!" is the complaint of someone unwilling to play with the ruleset...and is exactly what Sirlin spends his whole essay arguing against. Debate about this amongst fellow TO's, organizers, and the larger community is just fine, but not one player at Xyro's events has any grounds for complaint. If you don't like it, get the hell out -- I'm sure he won't miss one less bullshit thing to deal with as a TO.

[JackKieser]

I'm perfectly willing to sandbag a little during casuals while I wait for my round -- even give out helpful advice if they're up for receiving it. I'd never completely floor someone outside of tourney play. That being said, when I'm up when it counts, I spend very little time assessing the relative skill of my opponent outside of "he's currently doing something that endangers me / allows me an opening" or "based on the first round / knowledge gained during play, I THINK he will be doing X or Y, which is countered by option Z." Obviously if there is an extremely large gap in skill I'll notice, but as I personally am neither at the highest echelons of play nor at the bottom rungs of the tourney ladder, I have played very few rounds where someone is vastly worse than me to the point of it being relaxing.

See, this is where sportsmanship comes into play. Sometimes, you're lucky enough to get in some friendlies time before pools starts, but usually those matches are cliques and friends practicing for actual matches; few times will you see a pro playing an amateur before the tournament proper. But, put yourself in the shoes of a noob player for a second. This is your first time at a tourney, and you're excited. You're pretty good with your friends; some of them have even come to cheer you on. You get assigned your pool and you get in with some pro player (but you don't know that, because your a noob and you don't lurk SWF). Next thing to know, you go 0-2 and get 3-stocked both times, and your other pools matches go just as badly. How would you feel? Most people (sure, there are some freakish people like zircon who have superhuman maturity levels their first time out of the gate) would feel horrible, and certainly wouldn't be in the mood to play a game anymore.

This is the situation at actual tournaments. When it starts, the room is packed, but after first round / pools, half the room is empty because all those people just want to go home / do something that won't make them more depressed. As a TO, I've seen and heard this (and as a player, I've done this). This is not uncommon.

Now, you're the pro player that 3-stocked the noob in pools. You have a choice, both during the match and afterwards. During the match, it will be obvious that you are the better player; let's be clear, I'm not talking about two mid-level players, or even a mid-level player and a noob, I'm talking about you're D3 and your opponent doesn't even know what the words "chain grab" mean. Sure, you can cheese the guy, and even if you don't, you can 0-death him and end the match in 30 seconds so you can just get on to your next match as quickly as possible. But... it's not necessary. You don't have to do that to win, and you know, consciously know that your opponent will not only not have fun, but will feel humiliated and demoralized. You're really saying that you, just for the sake of saying you did, will really do that to a person with no regard for their emotion? And after the match, you also have a choice. You see the guy, totally wrecked and demoralized, and you have 3 options. You can leave for your next match (and the noob leaves the tournament, dejected, maybe never to return), you can shake his hand and say "GG" (which still leaves him feeling shitty, and he still probably leaves without learning how to beat a chain grab), or you shake his hand and say, "Good game; if you want to wait for just a sec, I'll play some friendlies with you and teach you how to stop that tech" (which keeps him there, cheers him up a bit, teaches him something, and gives the entire community a positive impression).

There is so much human / community element that Sirlin just leaves out in his writings; technically, it's not really his responsibility to foster good will in any competitive community. But, like I've already illustrated, being sportsmanlike has so much potential for positive growth for a gaming community: positive self-image, positive public image, increased player base (which means a more diverse game), and increased community (which is kind of the point of driving across 2 states to get to a tournament). There is so much that can be lost in the name of "playing to win", in the Sirinian sense.

Nothing to debate here, but it's nice to know that someone active over at SWF (incidentally, I don't post there because the vast majority of the community are jerks IMO) agrees with me.

Yeah, I agree.

I completely advocate the sharing of techniques after a round is over. In no way should anyone, regardless of their attitude / philosophy about competitive gaming, expect a player with a secret (or trick he believes is secret) spoil it before he has a chance to play with it. Case in point: HDR gave Ryu a fake fireball which recovers MUCH faster than his original one, and links into any of his special moves with an almost Marvel feel to it. At least three times I've told zircon that I had "something new" to show them about it. By which I meant that I was going to whip him once with it before giving out the details. Two of three times I did, and then shared (time three's mindgame wasn't as good ) what I had just done.

IMO it is the responsibility of top-level players (or in my case, players at the top level of a smaller group -- OCR) to share the new things they discover their characters to be capable of at some point. It enhances the game and allows a wider variety of tactical decisions for all characters. If you don't share your "secrets" after a tourney / event, then you're being selfish at the expense of the quality of the game you're making money playing.

Again, outside of close-knit groups of players, this rarely happens, and it's in part because of the exclusionary mindset we foster within our communities. We don't care about being sportsmanlike to outsiders; if we shake our pro buddy's hand after a match, we think that's what makes sportsmanship. Sportsmanship is grace in defeat and humility in victory, regardless of relative skill level. If pros aren't extending the olive branch to noobs (yes, even noobs that cry foul every now and then), they aren't really mature players with sportsmanship; it's a thin facade of sportsmanship.

And even so, we can't deny that there are still plenty of people that would actively and willingly horde secrets to make money at a tournament. That can't be denied. It's rare, but only in a pro-level sense; pros horde info from noobs all the time at large tournaments; I personally see it happen. That can't be denied, either.

Anyone truly adopting Sirlin's line of thinking wouldn't question a TO about their choice of rules at their own event. Either you agreed to the rules beforehand, or you didn't show up. Saying that something isn't fair e.g. "Banning MK isn't fair!" is the complaint of someone unwilling to play with the ruleset...and is exactly what Sirlin spends his whole essay arguing against. Debate about this amongst fellow TO's, organizers, and the larger community is just fine, but not one player at Xyro's events has any grounds for complaint. If you don't like it, get the hell out -- I'm sure he won't miss one less bullshit thing to deal with as a TO.

Correct, because someone truly adopting Sirlin's doctrine would never question a choice of rules until they prove, in some way, that they should be changed. That doesn't mean it's right, though. Face it: a major TO is behaving like a scrub. To a group of players, a scrub is the one guy saying "This needs to be banned 'cause it's so cheap!"; Xyro, in comparison, is the one TO in the room saying Meta / IC grabs are cheap. He's a scrub in a macro sense. You may argue that individual players don't have the right to complain, but they actually do, since Xyro is the one holding the tournaments and without his scene, Houston Smash (where he locally operates) wouldn't exist. If you don't like his rules... there is nowhere else to go. Besides, TO's may not like BS at their events, but we will always encourage debate over the rules (as long as no one expects them changed the-day-of). I don't know how many people I had to explain ISP rules to at WHOBO, but I loved every second of it (I actually had some good points raised to me that I hadn't considered before).

Ultimately, Sirlin's arguments lay the groundwork for people to exclude those who don't agree; after all, if the people who don't like Xyro's rules just never go, well, you can't expect debate and discourse in a place with no people, can you? A case in point: my grandparents argue that Muslims who don't 100% agree with the US social order should just leave, since they obviously don't want to be here. But, that's not true at all, since they do want to be here and without them, there's no social debate (on whatever issue they take offense to). Same in gaming. You're arguing that people who don't agree should just go away. But they want to join. Sirlin's thinking is explicitly excluding people who just want to be a part of the community, and that's never a good thing for competition.

[Tinaddar]

I agree that, in a tournament where actual money or prizes are on the line, doing whatever it takes to win is completely acceptable. Regardless of what should be banned, so long as the rules are clearly established and agreed upon, if you are following those rules in order to win (even if you're being a cheap asshole) then you're alright.

That said, there is still plenty of room to follow these rules and still be an unsportsmanlike dick. I will use as my example the fight at the end of Karate Kid 2. There is a karate match; whoever gets three points first wins. If you break a rule you lose a point. The bad guy is better than Daniel, and toys with him, scoring points but then breaking the rules to lose his points, hurt Danny, and keep the match going. Now, he's not “playing to win” here, but regardless: just because he is playing within the context of the rules does not exclude him from being a dick. The philosophy being discussed here that "just because you're playing within the rules means that nobody has the right to call you cheap, or an ass" is flawed.

If I'm playing in a tournament, and I'm using a super cheap technique that for some reason is allowed, I expect the person I beat to call me cheap. I'll even apologize to them after, and say, "Yeah, I know, what I did was a dick move, they really should ban that." I'll even be one of the first people to talk to those in charge and say, "Did you see what I did there? That isn't cool." Now, yes, everybody should be trying to improve themselves, and always reverting to “That’s cheap” isn’t the best way to go, but considering the fact that it is cheap, you should allow people their frustrations without resorting to childish name calling. (The 'pro' players playing in certain Brawl tournaments, for example, complain when items are allowed because it is all "based on luck". In essence, they're complaining because it is unfair... Sound familiar?)

The goal, then, is to create a set of rules that encourage (enforce) fair and diverse gameplay. These rules would not be arbitrary: using Akuma is a clear-cut example of something that breaks the game by forcing everybody to become Akuma. Banning throws is no good because they are an integral part of the game (and fair to boot). Basically, a competition should be about knowing what to do in various situations, and reacting accordingly. Part of the challenge involves being able to do the right thing at the right time, and keeping your nerves in check to get this done. Anything that reduces a game to “pick this character, execute this move, and you win every time” should be banned. It’s kind of like Chess… In every situation, there is an absolutely correct move to make, and that is why I will only ever play Chess for fun, and don’t try to become a pro: it would become as boring as Tic Tac Toe. Now, I’ll add that because Chess is so complicated, it is really hard to know WHAT that exact right move is, so there can be a lot of intellectual stimulation trying to figure it out… But the fact that it exists is problematic for me. How many of you would play in a Tic Tac Toe tournament? What’s the point? The same goes for any game where there is essentially only one option, or only one move that you have to perform.

[BardicKnowledge]

I maintain that Sirlin doesn't actively encourage players to be assholes and prevent newbies from improving. However, I also happily concede two points:

1) He should have mentioned something about how to win gracefully, as sportsmanship is HUGE to both me personally, and the longevity of any one game. Leaving it out completely does tend to passively encourage poor behavior.

2) If the skill gap between two players at a tourney is sufficiently big, the better player doesn't need to completely dominate the player. Why not take this time to experiment with risky techniques for a minute? The reaction of an unbiased (doesn't know the "standard" reaction/counter) player might actually help your game develop. Note that here I'm talking about the skill difference between, say, my wife and I in Smash (yep, I'm better than her, go figure).

I'm definitely a mid level player at best, and certainly wouldn't hold my own in a large-scale (EVO, etc) tourney -- as a result, I am (almost) never in the 2nd situation described above.

It seems like the crux of both sides of this debate is coming down to a desire for good sportsmanship, which I'm sure you, zircon, and myself can all agree is only good for the community (and competitive gaming at large, by comparison).

Also Jack, IMO the best thing your ISP project has done was to involve a lot of people (including myself -- I've posted at least twice in the thread) that normally would never have a chance to voice an opinion to the people making metagame decisions. Hopefully rulesets and bans become more open in future games...

[zircon]

Bardic is right (again). We're all agreeing on the point that good sportsmanship is important to the health and longevity of a game, and that good sportsmanship is, well, good to have. We just seem to disagree on whether "playing to win" inherently results in bad sportsmanship. Considering both he and I do play to win, as well as many others we know in this community, the answer would seem to be "no" and I'm not sure how much more proof we can really give of that.