Play to win: how to win games and what you need to know about professional players in GameDev [part 1]

A long time ago, my friends and I were playing Starcraft using a dial-up modem. I often lost until I read a phrase on one of the BBSs that changed everything. The principle is very simple: in real-time strategies, the one who constantly attacks wins. It was necessary to learn to think in categories of constant threat creation.

Why am I doing this? There is such a man - David Searlene . Cybersportsman, champion of Street Fighter, game designer, table tennis player, eSports coach. He has a whole theory on how to train and play to win. Universal, applicable to all games. Below are the main theses of the first part and my comments. It will be interesting to read about the main things from the book from the point of view of GameDev (especially balancing), and just for life.

Why play to win?
David answers this question very simply. Winning is the only measurable outcome of the game. Like running - you can run for pleasure, you can run for training, you can run from someone. But only the result shows good or bad. If time is reduced - you win every day. If you won a 100m - you achieved the result. If you run away from the evil Vasya - this is a one hundred percent victory. So, rivalry games are good with instant feedback. Your position in comparison with other players - this is feedback.
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David believes that everything that does not bring you closer to victory is counterproductive. In our board games, this is probably one of the most important moments. The fact is that, sitting down at the table, the company simply cannot enter the game as independent players. Be sure to be Anya, who sleeps with Boris (and they are likely to play as allies). There will be Zinovy, whom no one in the company knows, and therefore he is all wet.

We have a simple rule: “Who brings a life relationship to the game is a fool. Who transfers a relationship from game to life is a fool doubly. ” That is, inside the game, only measurable victory indicators are evaluated. But, naturally, this approach is not so very real in ordinary "kitchen" companies.

What is a game?
The game is a set of rules. Since the main conflict is being built between you and other players, it is important that if not all the players agree on the rules, you cannot say that they play the same game. The rules indicate the boundaries of gaming reality. They say what actions are allowed, what are prohibited. Then David talks about the lamers as they are. They create their own rules and live by them. For example, they come simply to wild frenzy, when David wins the fighting game only with a chain of identical shots in a row. Works? Yes. Effectively? Yes. Offensively? And how. Is there a rule that prohibits the use of the same movement to infinity? Not. Victory.

By the way, this means that you need to provide for such a development - if suddenly a very effective strategy is not spectacular and easy to play, it can cause offense.

When does the fun of competitive play come about?
When a worthy opponent appears. If you find a newbie and do it, this is not a game. When the master finds you and washes his washing like that - this is not a game. But when there is an opportunity to compete on an equal footing, and the result is unknown in advance - this is like a dialogue on an equal footing. At this point, the most interesting thing happens.

How to choose a game?
David believes that the game must meet three important criteria:

1. Players must be equal before the start. He has in mind the secrecy of information, but since then the Donat problem has clearly arisen - and I would add that a good game is one where your non-game resources like money do not give an advantage. Chess with the ability to buy a couple more pieces or upgrade pawns would be weird.
2. The game should not be random - the learning curve should be such that interest is maintained as it develops. If you play Russian roulette - the preparation does not change the result. The advantage of the players should be in the ability to play stronger when it is possible to reveal the mechanics or with purely intellectual superiority (or in agility, for example). When a number of board games were made tournaments, the DCI league (a major gaming magazine) was formed. So, the rules had to be redone into avoiding a strong accident and actions of agility - the rules of the league meant only an intellectual duel.
3. You must have access to good opponents. First, the weak, then the middle - and then to the masters. There is no such problem online, but at the time of David in the hall with arcade machines this could be difficult. Having learned to win everyone in the area, it was easy to snatch in the first round of a normal tournament. By the way, at first he advises to play with beginners in order to feel the taste of victories and progress, but to train seriously - only on the masters. The main principle is that you don’t have to wait for the stupid mistake of your opponent, but you must act aggressively, putting it at a disadvantage.

About bugs
The main question is whether to use bugs to win. David's answer is yes, if bugs equally affect two players. Equally - this is when, for example, due to a certain feature of the fighting game engine, a fighter is invulnerable at any particular point in the execution of a technique. Differently - this is when you can do something, and the second player's screen goes out.

There are two types of games in terms of preparation. Old kondovye suggested a very deep study of the platform, since the patches for them simply were not released (it is difficult to patch the cartridge on the Szego). They passed long tests, and everything that went into the stores is not a bug, but a feature. On the other hand, the Internet allowed the release of raw products with successively released patches and constant pre-balancing.

The most interesting type of patch is the establishment of certain tournament rules. For example, we took out one of the strongest project cards from the deck for “Startup” tournaments - this is just a subtype of such a patch.

David talks about the difference between good and bad bans. For example, there is a shooter, and everything in it is camper (because it is close to the optimal strategy). It is easy to prohibit motoring automatically - just merge players who do not move more than 15 meters for 3 minutes. Since before that it was optimal, now the optimal strategy will be as close as possible to the forbidden one. That is, camping for 2 minutes 59 seconds, and then rushing to a new position. There will always be players who will use tactics that are close to forbidden ones, so it is very important not to impose bans on such “fuzzy” concepts, but to create conditions for the optimal tactic to be different. On the other hand, there are games that imply clear prohibitions. For example, in MTG, you can prohibit a specific card. It is easy to verify, it is very specific. Hasty ban - lamer method, you first need to understand whether there is a counter-tactic to use not the most obvious moments of the game. Many “ultimatum tactics” after the tournament are not viable.

In Japan, there is a very interesting story with fighting games. In Street Fighter Super Turbo there is such a character - Akuma. The fact is that one of its techniques was not conceived by the developers, but the engine allows you to do it. In practice, this means that there is a tactic that gives a clear advantage to the professional. With proper training this fighter is impossible to beat. Not "hard", but it is impossible. This character without any questions was forbidden to choose in tournaments in the USA. But in Japan there is no official ban on it. This is what David writes: “All the best players know that Akuma is a powerful character, so it’s better not to use it, because it destroys a beautiful game, so there is an unspoken rule not to use this character in tournaments. There are a small number of people who still choose Akuma for playing in tournaments, but the best players never do this. Usually weak players try their hand at playing with this powerful character and lose, which is humiliating and shameful. ”

In this respect, the history of the development of chess is interesting. Chess is generally a good game to learn - it is very discrete, players in close conditions at the initial stage (only someone goes first), a good long learning curve. So, besides the especially famous patch of the elephant, that he walked diagonally on any number of cells, and not on three exactly, there were many small changes. Particularly noteworthy is the ban on vertical castling and the ban on turning a pawn into an opponent. Try to evaluate the perverse nature of those who used it.

Transfer
We have laid out several chapters of the original . The book is in open access with the license free-to-read, the translation will be also:

1. An introduction to what games are; why is it all; why beating a recumbent body is dishonest, but effective and safe.
2. How to start - how to choose a game, what you need to know about the environment, what basic skills are needed, with whom to play.
3. About the lamer - about who it is, what kind of barriers the weak players have in their heads, how to play correctly and what to do if the lamer beat you.
4. About bans, patches and balancing .
5. UPD: a fresh chapter about fraudulent methods (cheats) .

And we continue approximately two more chapters a week, plus there you can subscribe to the following. Well, if you're interested, I’ll continue the most useful comments with comments here. Because in some places you want to argue, in some places - to add modern data, and in some places - just emphasize how cool it is. Further, David has about the types of players, how to deal with everyone, and not always obvious things why tournament organizers benefit from having strong players play with weak ones. Interesting preparation strategies, description of threat creation paradigms on the example of different games like the fighting game and the first Starcraft.

Who wants to find a Russian book about “Play to Win” - see G. Kasparov “Unlimited Duel”, there is a very beautiful, tense and useful description of the tournament with Karpov.