David Sirlin

Jesse Schell's book is a great read beyond game design. Thanks for the other links. To leave something in return, here's something I read the other day and kept thinking about it (I'm designing on a PvP motion based game) "In competitive games, there is little more valuable than knowing the mind of the opponent, which the Japanese call “yomi.” As a side note, I would even argue that the “strategic depth” of a game should be defined almost entirely on its ability to support and reward yomi." The Yomi Layer concept is a reminder that moves need to have counters. If you know what the opponent will do, you should generally have some way of dealing with that. https://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/7-spies-of-the-mind

If you’re interested in this, can I recommend Dave Sirlin’s excellent “Playing To Win” series? One of the few articles that I’ve read that permanently changed the way I think about games, both from the player’s and the designer’s point of view. Edit: https://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win This is the overview but read the whole thing start to end, seriously.

The thing I love about MrBeast is that he's YouTube "Playing to Win" [0]. Google's YT algorithm is whatever it thinks makes Google the most money. "Doing YT right" is an oxymoronic statement, because YT doesn't care in the least about ethics. MrBeast found a way to optimize algorithmic ranking, in a fairly altruistic and ethical way. On the scale of " {Politician} hates {group}, see what to be outraged about" to "See what the drug companies don't want you to know, via this simple trick" YT optimization... MrBeast is comparatively saint-like. [0] https://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introduction

Besides the mechanical/knowledge parts of it, one important thing (at least in my opinion) is cultivating an improvement focused mindset. Playing To Win [0] is a good overview. If something in the game doesn't go your way, blame your own understanding of the game and try to figure out what you didn't know or what you did wrong. Team-based games like League of Legends can be kind of frustrating simply because your control over the outcome of the match is proportionally less than in a 1v1 game. It doesn't mean you can't influence the match to an outsized degree, but even the best players lose matches sometimes because their teammates perform too poorly to be "carried" to victory. Managing this frustration and taking a long view of performance is key to improving at these kinds of games (or at least climbing the ranked ladder). [0]: https://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win

I think it's worth adding: Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix is a rebalancing of Super Turbo done by David Sirlin and officially supported by Capcom. David's design notes and commentary are really interesting. https://www.sirlin.net/sf-hdr/street-fighter-hd-remix-design-overview I'd love to see someone do the same for Capcom vs SNK 2, but a guy can dream, right? :)

This idea of playing less than "perfect", so as to steer your opponent into plays that give you greater advantage than is available in the perfect mirror-match, is a well-worn familiar concept to game designers, and yes, poker players. If that's something new that bothers chess aficionados, I don't feel like it reflects particularly well on that game's culture. https://gamedesignadvance.com/?p=2346 https://www.sirlin.net/articles/solvability

If you want to improve at competitive games, I recommend David Silrin's "Playing to Win": http://www.sirlin.net/ptw

Highly recommend this book as well. The psychology he discusses I've found very relevant to life in general. Often I've wished something in my life was better and found self-imposed handicaps or my true goals differing from my stated goals (eg. really wanting esteem from peers even though business success is my stated goal) being the source of my difficulty. Exactly the "scrub mentality" Sirlin discusses in PtW: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub

These two criteria are not sufficient when winning the games offer life-changing sums of money and prestige. A star NFL quarterback with a $100 million contract may well still play the game even if it's unfun and if people don't want to play with them. More generally, competitive games quite often degenerate into a "whatever is within the rules" mindset, and that's perfectly fine. Since this is top of mind right now, and since perhaps someone out there may have not read it yet, it's worth linking to David Sirlin's "Playing To Win" - http://www.sirlin.net/ptw - the book is about competitive fighting arcade games like Street Fighter but it covers many other games and the philosophy is enthralling.

All good points, but additionally: sometimes it's good to wait and see where a glitch takes a game, rather than banning it straight away because it 'breaks' the version of the game that everyone has been playing so far. A classic example is the Quake series, where the movement mechanics that gave the games lasting appeal were all originally accidental. (And Carmack even briefly patched strafe-jumping out of Q3, before quickly reverting -- but only because his fix caused other problems: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/09/02/quake-3-john-carmack-straf… David Sirlin also writes well about this sort of thing (with more of a focus on 'cheap' use of intended mechanics), though his tone could be offputting to people who think hyper-competitive videogaming is a bit silly: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win

That article was excellent but also contained a trove of interesting links and footnotes. I particularly enjoyed "Introducing the Scrub" -- http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub

This reminds me of a great thought piece that I studied a lot during my gaming years: Playing to Win. http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win Particularly relevant to the Jeopardy contestant that buzzed in when he didn't know the answers to block others from getting the cash.

David Sirlin has a great podcast about the theory of game design: http://www.sirlin.net/podcast

Thanks for the link. Although there were some points in the article where i was not sure he was being serious or sarcastic. Just began reading the actual book Playing to Win (Its available free for online reading: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw ). It has already struck me as very intelligently written and insightful when you view its lessons as applying to life (at least the competitive aspects of it) rather some video game.

David Sirlin has a lot of great articles on designing competitive games: http://www.sirlin.net/article-archive/

Sorry. The word 'fair' tends to get me going slightly, because I'm a competitive person. That word tends to be used by people as a crutch. For more: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/ and specifically: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/intermediates-guide.html If the state of California didn't think what Arrington did was right, there'd be a law. We've built up a system of rules, we all have to follow them, Mike did, so he's in the clear.

hackers fixing sports with numerical analysis. I love it. fine tuning game design is a fascinating subject. Sirlin's long articles on the subject are great. http://www.sirlin.net/articles/super-balance-articles-ii-turbo.html

Here's a rebuttal that I've seen linked all over the place, especially by game designers, anxious that their lofty dreams of high art will fall by the wayside to creating simple carrots on sticks. http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2010/2/22/external-rewards-and-jesse-schell…

Once you're good enough, the tactics melt away and you just think about the strategy. This is true with any competitive game. It takes a long time, and a lot of effort[1] to get to the level where you can have this "fairness epiphany", though. Strangely enough, a good documentary on the process exists in the form of a manga/anime series, Hikaru no Go, following a Go player as he is first guided through games, then plays, struggling, himself, until he finally has the epiphany and realizes he needs no help from a computer (or, in this case, ancient spirit) to make him better. [1] http://www.sirlin.net/ptw

The best players play to win. http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html

> This approach eventually sucks out the pleasure of exploration and random encounters [...] Oh, that depends entirely on the game and what your mood is. In something like Opus Magnum that min-maxing is the entire point. In something like Factorio or Oxygen Not Included you can have fun both with bumbling around or with min-maxing. Also have a look at https://www.sirlin.net/ptw for some perspective. Playing to Win can be fun and rewarding. See especially the chapter https://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/love-of-the-game-not-playing-to-win > Now it’s time for what appears to be the opposite point of view: “playing to win” at all times is counter-productive. If you want to win over the long term, then you can’t play every single game as if it were a tournament finals. If you did, you wouldn’t have time for basic R&D, you’d never learn the quirky nuances that show up unexpectedly at tournaments, and you are likely to get stuck honing suboptimal tactics.

And just to be clear to you, the rest of the article was great. I think there was three or four points that I was going 'but ...' and then the next sentence you explicitly mentioned exactly that. Very well put together. > Issue: Multiple undifferentiated inputs to node Under this segment you say 'and it never is' implies that it's just really difficult, you can be even more forceful here - it's impossible. Sirlin's article on Viable Options[0] goes into depth here - while he's talking about best move to attack in a fighting game, and while your case is simpler in that the enemies don't have options for themselves, the mapping between the two arguments is there. For any given use-case there can only ever be two choices, the best choice, and the counter to the best choice. The counter to the counter just ends up being the best again so you can't have any more depth without creating a new use-case. [0]: https://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-2-via…

If you've never read it before, I highly recommend reading David Sirlin's Playing to Win. http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/ Specifically the chapter "Introducing... the Scrub" discusses exactly this sentiment. http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub > In Street Fighter, the scrub labels a wide variety of tactics and situations “cheap.” This “cheapness” is truly the mantra of the scrub. Performing a throw on someone is often called cheap. A throw is a special kind of move that grabs an opponent and damages him, even when the opponent is defending against all other kinds of attacks. The entire purpose of the throw is to be able to damage an opponent who sits and blocks and doesn’t attack. As far as the game is concerned, throwing is an integral part of the design—it’s meant to be there—yet the scrub has constructed his own set of principles in his mind that state he should be totally impervious to all attacks while blocking. The scrub thinks of blocking as a kind of magic shield that will protect him indefinitely.

> "good to avoid people that have a tendency to game things" Sorry, but most employers essentially "game things": they extract as much value as they can out of you in return for the smallest amount of compensation they can get away with giving you. Yet I don't see you being critical of managers and CEOs, just other engineers. Managers love it when engineers getting into pissing matches about "passion", hackathons, which stack is most l33t, etc. (Erik Dietrich's term "carnival cash" comes to mind.) Meanwhile that business major 10 years your junior with a PMP certificate they got online -- and who couldn't code their way out of a paper bag -- just got promoted to senior project manager and gets to tell you what to do. By 40, to put it in high-level abstract terms, the most important thing is figuring out what you need to be doing so you're earning the compensation you want/need and living the lifestyle you actually want to live. The "game" that other engineers around us in the marketplace are playing, so to speak, is the one having to do with optimizing compensation and quality of life. I can choose to walk onto the court and play a different game -- one with rules I personally feel are more noble, or something -- but that won't change the external reality around me, and nobody will care, except employers looking to take advantage of engineers willing to prioritize "passion" over things like "compensation" or "spending time with my kids" or "adequate health…

I think it's pretty hard to get into a "playing to win" mindset at any age. At least it is/was for me, it's hard to let go of the joy of winning through clever or flashy moves and focus on the joy of winning a high level competition, where everyone is playing to win. Sirlin's (fighting game player / game designer) has a good book/series of articles about this that's made the front page a few times: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub "I once played a scrub who was actually quite good. That is, he knew the rules of the game well, he knew the character matchups well, and he knew what to do in most situations. But his web of mental rules kept him from truly playing to win. He cried cheap as I beat him with “no skill moves” while he performed many difficult dragon punches. He cried cheap when I threw him five times in a row asking, “Is that all you know how to do? Throw?” I gave him the best advice he could ever hear. I told him, “Play to win, not to do ‘difficult moves.’”"

Hi, fighting game player here. You're very right about the way we see the games: Ryu's Shoryuken isn't a stylish kung-fu uppercut, it's an attack that's invincible on startup and with a strong vertical hitbox, making it useful against jumping attacks and to beat careless attacks from the opponent, but which is easily punishable if blocked. The essay you're referring to is written by a man named David Sirlin, and he runs a website where he talks about his ideas on game design[1]. He's perhaps most known in the community for helping to bring to light the concept of "yomi," (lit. "reading"), the process of taking actions specifically to get a grasp on your opponent's thought process and be able to predict it. To him, that's the one pure essence of fighting games (though this view is not universally held). In fact, he's already done something like you describe. He designed a card game named, appropriately enough, Yomi[2], that attempts to bring the core of a fighting game into a card game format. Much like in fighting games, attacking beats throws, throws beat blocking, and blocking beats attacks. Hitting a player allows you to attempt to combo them, but the opponent can play cards (that may be bluffs) which can break the combo. He did something similar with chess, calling it Chess 2, though it's much less popular than Yomi. [1] http://www.sirlin.net [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yomi_(card_game)

>Chess is as balanced as it gets. It's "balanced" in some respects but both sides use the same features and most games end in a draw, and high level play is less and less interesting. And for that matter it's not even balanced really -- tournaments have players play both white and black because they are so inequal. This is like balancing starcraft by having everyone play mirror matchups or swap races. >So Anand encountered a "mild surprise" in the opening moves that left him "flying blind" (meaning the board was in a position with which he had not previously studied) and because of that he decided to not keep pursuing the game. He just engineered a draw. >Most real people are "flying blind" after the first couple moves of the game, and it's the challenge of trying to solve a puzzle against a live opponent (who is also flying blind) that makes the game so fun. At the highest levels, Grandmasters go very deep into the game in positions they have studied exhaustively, and then the moment they feel uncomfortable they search for the emergency brake, and consider themselves happy to escape with half a point. >Intuitive understanding of the game and moments of brilliant improvisation are the most exciting aspects, and yet memorized lines of play are so deeply entrenched now that when a top player encounters anything outside of memorized, studied lines he heads directly for the draw. It's really the opposite of what you'd…

https://www.sirlin.net/articles/designing-defensively-guilty-gear This is probably it. As the article says, it’s also a cleverly layered mechanic if a player correctly predicts when their opponent will use it.

If I get your drift, I agree. > instead of feeling the need to drag everyone else into the Sith spirit You may like: https://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win (Note: I have some disagreements with that here and there in the context we're discussing.)

Related reading: https://www.sirlin.net/ptw "David Airline's Playing to Win has been the competitive gamer's bible since the year 2000."