incoherence.net

Street Fighter IV makes me feel like a child again. Back then, I was one of those Asian kids who’d hang out at the local arcade/convenience store on a rainy day ⁽¹⁾. Holding a buck to frugally dispense over the course of an hour, a lot of time was spent watching other people play; y’know, those teenagers and their disposable income.

The game of choice for the longest time was Street Fighter II and its derivatives. I wasn’t good enough (nor had the cash) to play the game well, but watching a line of skilled players made me appreciate their craft, the time and effort used to hone their virtual fighting prowess. Of all the stupid things people choose to compete in, controlling virtual characters with a joystick – which in no way mimic fights in reality would dictate – is probably one of the sillier mediums.

My childhood must have molded me into this passive observer, as opposed to a serious player. Whereas most players strive to reach a “higher level of play”, I’m content to learn just enough to not look like a complete idiot. What I find fascinating about these highly competitive games, instead, is the community which inevitably arises from deep, strategic titles. I enjoy watching players discuss the intricacies of their pastime with unmatched passion.

Dig beyond most simple single player games, and you’ll likely find that multiplayer communities house a surprisingly number of analytical minds who unleash the full fury of their, uh, analysis on the game. Deconstructing the game down to its programming minutiae, these are the people who count individual displayed frames (at 1/60ths of a second per frame), quantify in-game actions, and post elaborate probability tables of thousands of scenario outcomes – serious stuff.

And they’re able to make reasoned conclusions because video games are a happy balance between more traditional games and, for the lack of a better alternative, the real world.

Video games feature simple rules, enforced by the computer with an iron fist. Whereas traditional multiplayer board or table games usually have a few rules that build up to a complex game, video games tend to start the player with a lot of rules, though the player isn’t even aware of most of them in the beginning. Because of this, it’s pretty standard nowadays for games to have the single player portion be a psuedo-tutorial for the player, getting them used to all the weapons, units, levels, and strategies they’ll surely face against other humans.

But at the same time, video games often base their gameplay on some facet of reality, whether it’s punches and kicks, commanding an army, or pointing a gun and squeezing the trigger. Nobody will mistake a video game for reality (though America’s Army‘s recruitment strategy implies some immersion), but they do make great teaching tools in simulation. The realistic games have to simplify complex reality into something playable and understandable; it’s what drives enthusiasts to games like Gran Turismo for their accurate depictions.

With multiplayer, the advanced players are the ones who know and take advantage of every obscure rule in the game, even programming bugs. Game with longevity often have strategy “cycles”: one strategy is found to be especially powerful, so everyone spends time learning and executing it, until someone finds a viable counter, which triggers a rush of players to learn and master the new counter strategy, etc. The really good games have kept this up for over a decade.

I guess the takeaway is that, with multiplayer video games simulating the real world (admittedly to a limited extent) by providing a simpler construct of rules, sometimes they happen upon insight applicable to a larger context. Starcraft – one of those decade-long games – has its top players not only  managing in-game resources, but also their concentration through the match. Every game has a few crucial moments deciding the outcome, and it makes sense to spend the most effort during those times, provided you can identify them.

I’ve been trying to schedule my workday along the same lines; I block out an hour or two of concentration in the afternoon (definitely not a morning person), munch or drink something to get the sugar/caffeine levels up, and try to power through a hard problem or a lot of tasks.

Afterwards, I get to lean back, sigh, and think about what I want to blog next.

1. in Vancouver, there were a lot of rainy days (↩)