Tag Archives: spike

What People Want Out of Competitive Games (Part 1)

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The purest image of the competitive gamer is the person who “plays to win.” Whereas other players might decry a particular move or strategy as “unfair” or “overpowered,” the true competitor uses every tool available. But while this is the ideal in a certain sense for how a competitive gamer should behave, I find that it’s not actually a reflection of reality. If it is, it’s a reality that has long since passed.

Since the proliferation of the internet in the 90s and into the 2000s, the image of what it means to be competitive in the world of games (particularly fighting games) has been defined by two different resources. One is David Sirlin’s “Playing to Win,” which discusses what it means to not be held back by concepts such as “honor” or “aesthetic.” The other is Seth Killian’s “Domination 101,” which positions opposite the true competitor the figure known as the “scrub”—the player who constantly makes excuses, refers to things they lose to as “cheap,” and chooses to complain rather than learn. Within reason (so no foul play), both are based around the idea that what matters most in competition are the words “YOU WIN.”

Both Sirlin and Killian have changed over the years. Sirlin became a game designer who has to take a greater range of players into account. Killian is now a community veteran, old and wizened and less fiery. However, at the time these series of articles were written, both were most certainly what the Magic: The Gathering developers call “Spikes.” According to the developers of Magic: The Gathering, players of their card game can be roughly divided into three different archetypes. In contrast to the “Timmy,” who loves to make big plays using the highest-damage tools, and the “Johnny,” who loves to innovate new strategies and employ unorthodox tactics, the Spike is defined by the tendency to simply do what is most effective and efficient to beat the opponent.

Because of those articles, I believe that the stereotypical image of the competitive player, in fighting games especially, became the “Spike.” However, what’s curious is that, when you look at even the highest levels of play, that undiluted competitive mentality does not seem as dominant as one might assume. The greatest fighting game player of all time is Umehara Daigo, but in his book The Will to Keep Winning, he writes:

Tournaments are a playground for people who practice for growth. It’s where they show off their achievements. Once I made that realization, I finally started making continued growth my goal, rather than winning. Games enrich my life by allowing me to grow as an individual, and that’s what motivates me to keep on going.

Going from a different angle, Super Smash Bros. Melee player Mang0 has discussed how he’s had to balance changing his playing style to suit more recent developments in his scene with staying true to himself:

What’s clear is that even the best players in the world aren’t necessarily subscribe “pure Spikes.” While anyone who goes to a tournament to get as far as possible is a Spike on some level, hybrids such as “Johnny-Spikes” or “Timmy-Spikes” exist. This is even acknowledged by the Magic: The Gathering developers. However, what I believe is that, not only are “Timmy-Spikes” present among competitive gaming communities such as the FGC, but they are about as prevalent as pure Spikes, and in some communities are the greatest population.

Where once even the biggest competitive gaming communities might have been incredibly niche and might have indeed been comprised of mostly Spikes, I think that world has changed immensely, due to online play, greater publicity, streaming video such as Twitch, the concept of eSports, and so on. Going from the strongest champions in the paragraph above to the lower levels of aspiring competitors and eSports spectators, it is often the case that many people care just as much (if not more) about how victory is achieved than whether it happens at all.

While few people, be they watching or playing, can say they have no investment in wins or losses, what competitive games provide for a great number of players is a feeling of power. This might come from the look of the game itself, or from how it plays. A pure Timmy, at their most extreme, wouldn’t mind a loss, provided he managed to land a breathtaking combo that squeezes the life out of the opponent. They fight for the highlight reel, to be turned into a 30-second Twitch clip or gfycat. Keep in mind that this is not necessarily a “scrub” attitude. Timmy-Spikes, while they most certainly want to win, would prefer to win with style.

There are certain games, I believe, that even encourage Timmy-Spike mindsets more than others. These include the Guilty Gear series, the Marvel vs. Capcom series, and Super Smash Bros. Melee. What they all have in common is that the flashiest, most impressive-looking techniques tend to also be extremely effective in high-level play. Techniques that make you feel like unbridled energy is coursing through your veins, things that the common gamer might never achieve reliably, become yours to control and command, and they just so happen to carry a lot of visual oomph.

None of what I’ve mentioned in this article is fully an “eSports” or “video game”-exclusive phenomenon. People want to see and experience glory, and that image of grand triumph as a dramatic moment is etched into the human experience. It might just be that, because video games are a relatively new form of competition in an age where media and personal interaction become increasingly blurred, we’ve seen eSports grow much more rapidly and visibly than other forms of competition, even if it’s still small potatoes compared to soccer or boxing.

People Who Play to Prove Something Cause Damage to Those Switching Out

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While I have had many friends over the years who were quite fond of Magic: The Gathering, for one reason or another I never quite got into it. So when I began reading about the different player types in Magic as defined by the cards’ creators, I found it so fascinating in a way that I kind of wish I had gotten into the game more. But while I do not have familiarity with Magic, I have thrown many hours into the Pokemon series, and I thought about whether or not I’d be able to determine by player type based on my experience there.

According to Mark Rosewater, the architect behind the current card creation system, players of Magic fall into one of three categories: Timmy, who “wants to experience something,” Johnny, who “wants to express something,” and Spike, who “plays to prove something.” More details can be found here. I’ve found myself unable to quite determine where I fall in the spectrum, but perhaps if I explain how I feel about one aspect of the Pokemon, maybe you can help me out.

The second generation of Pokemon games introduced an attack called “Hidden Power.” Story-wise, it was supposed to be a mysterious strength lurking deep within your Pokemon which allowed it to attack with a type element that it normally would not able to. On a technical level, it was an attack ranging in power from weak to medium strength that could be any one of the 17 Pokemon types in the game depending on your individual Pokemon’s inherent statistics. At first it came across as a move you were “lucky” to get, but its meaning and purpose changed in the context of high-level competition, where it could be manipulated to give you exactly the type and strength you wanted. Combined with the fact that nearly every Pokemon could learn it, Hidden Power became a wild card of sorts, customizable just like everything else in the game.

I did not like Hidden Power then, and even though its capacity has been a little more limited since Diamond and Pearl and the re-categorization of “physical” and “special” attacks where the move only becomes useful to “Special Attackers,” I still do not like it. As a person who really enjoys creating Pokemon teams using Pokemon that are not the cream of the crop and trying to figure out different ways to make them work even when they’re at a distinct disadvantage, the way Hidden Power has been continuously used as a near-automatic suggestion to fill a Pokemon’s move slot has always bothered me. Need your Hypno to fight a Swampert? Just give it Hidden Power Grass. Ground types giving your Jolteon trouble? Hidden Power Ice is your answer. Rather than encouraging players to really sit down and think about how a Pokemon could make the most out of its limitations, Hidden Power became a band-aid that could be applied to just about anything, the chainsaw applied to the proverbial hedge maze which just encourages laziness. While I don’t necessarily fault anyone for using the move (why ignore it if it’s there?), I would rather it never existed in the first place.

I am well aware of the counter-argument that Hidden Power is a boon to these lesser Pokemon of which I’m so fond, as it gives them diversity and the ability to compete where without it they would just have no other choice. After all, why should Dragonite get Ice, Electric, Fire, and Water attacks but not Pidgeot? I understand that side well, but I just wish the solution wasn’t as simple and widespread as Hidden Power. With Hidden Power, there’s so much less challenge in trying to get a Pokemon to work that it takes some of my enjoyment out of team-building, because I can’t just ignore that it exists because it’d inevitably be used against me.

So what do you think? I get the feeling I’m not really all that Spike, and I know hybrids can exist, but I’m not too sure where I fall between Timmy and Johnny.

As an aside, I’m quite pumped that Mewtwo finally gets its own signature attack. I’ve been hoping for this since forever because previously Mewtwo’s only distinguishing trait was that it was “really good.”