[HN Gopher] Are you playing to play, or playing to win?
___________________________________________________________________
Are you playing to play, or playing to win?
Author : impostervt
Score : 86 points
Date : 2021-09-21 18:52 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (commoncog.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (commoncog.com)
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Not everything in life has to be about maximizing growth, 'wins'
| or profit.
|
| If I enjoy playing a video game a certain way, instead of
| 'cheesing' it, I'll do so. If I wish to run a 'lifestyle'
| business, I'll do so. I'm not sacrificing my enjoyment of
| something on the altar of capitalism.
| gmuslera wrote:
| Not all games are competitive. Sometimes you just achieve what
| you really are wanting by just playing, having fun, learning
| something, filling time, reaching a goal that is not maximizing
| anything, etc.
|
| Even in some competitive ones, you may not want to do what
| implies winning over all other rivals, they may have a big
| advantage over you because genetics, money, time, culture or so
| on, but over yourself. Faster, Stronger and Highest over what you
| previously did is a mindful way to play some games.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This article isn't about those games, it's about how people
| make a living. Don't get hung up on the word "game;" wars are
| games.
| motohagiography wrote:
| The question I'd have is, what are tools you can use to catch
| yourself scrub thinking? Coaching, certainly. If I'm angry or
| disappointed about a person, that's a useful tell of scrub
| thinking I'd suspect.
|
| The question of where non-scrub thinking diverges from ethics
| seemed left unanswered. I think scrubs believe there exists a
| "just sociopathic enough," personality type who outperforms us,
| and we comfort ourselves in our mediocrity by moralizing against
| them, where non-scrubs recognize other non-scrubs and make the
| evaluation of whether they are more dangerous or not, and that's
| about it. The immoderate side of the non-scrub spectrum becomes
| the banal nihilism of perfidious frauds, yet, to even have words
| for that is itself, a scrub perspective. Wondering how to pop out
| of a scrubbist view.
| bovermyer wrote:
| I maintain that doing some things the weird way that makes no
| sense is often a lot more fun and rewarding than doing it the
| "correct" way to get the popular result.
|
| For example, there is one player of Lord of the Rings Online who
| baked pies to reach level cap. That's it. No combat. No quests.
| Just pies. Many, many pies. They had a blast in the process.
|
| Some people see building an innovative, ground-breaking product,
| making a billion dollars, and selling at the perfect time as
| winning. Meanwhile, I'm over here doing work that's been done
| before a million times, solving problems that are pretty mundane
| by comparison, and I'm enjoying myself.
|
| I don't need or want to "win." The game I'm playing has rules
| that I wrote - and continue to change.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| I suppose it's the correct term but "playing Judo" sounds so
| weird to me.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| I have always heard "judo practitioner" and not "judo player"
| but I suppose "practicing judo" makes it sound like it's not
| competitive.
| neonnoodle wrote:
| Yes, Judo is a game and it is played.
| ryandrake wrote:
| This reminds me of "cheesing" in online games, where someone
| figures out some minor game imbalance that's cheap and easy to do
| and exploits it. No hacking or cheating, just playing the game
| as-it-is rather than as-it's-intended. Examples are camping in
| FPS shooter games, spamming hard-to-block moves in fighting games
| and Zergrush-like strategies in RTS games. People will say it's
| cheesy and a dishonorable way to win, but then again, you're
| winning--all completely within the rules and parameters set out
| by the game. The people crying "cheese" are playing a different,
| constrained and harder game, self-imposed out of some sense of
| purity or honor, and are upset that they're not winning.
| tibiapejagala wrote:
| Maybe they are not upset about not winning, but that a fun to
| play game is now no fun at all? If there is an imbalance/glitch
| which renders most of the game depth obsolete I'm not leaving
| because I'm salty, I'm going to have actual fun elsewhere
| instead.
| RadRobot wrote:
| Although I agree that playing the meta game is important, I do
| still think that playing the meta game ~exclusively~ in certain
| contexts is just flat out corruption. Especially in business,
| politics.
|
| With video games and sports, there is less at stake - but the
| example in the article with cable companies shows how, if all
| business played the meta game, every customer would have
| miserable service in that case.
|
| In sports or video games, I can give examples of how it's
| annoying, and ruins the whole point of the game too:
|
| 1. Tennis: If a tennis player takes long bathroom breaks when
| they sense their opponent is ahead (so that their opponent cools
| down, looses momentum and also gets frustrated), and also texts
| their coach to get advice while in there - knowing that nobody
| can confirm this.
|
| This has nothing to do with the skill of the game. It annoys the
| crowd, it reduces opponent's in-game advantage, and potentially
| increases their strategic advantage illegitimately.
|
| They aren't breaking the rules, but is that tennis? I don't think
| so
|
| 2. Mortal Kombat: Back when I used to play against my brother, I
| would use a "cheap" move that when done in succession, it was
| almost impossible to defend against.
|
| My brother would get upset, but I would keep using it until he
| stopped playing.
|
| In this case, fine - the game is implemented this way so you
| can't argue against it. But in retrospect, this is just the
| game's poor design coming through, since the outcome is that the
| game is not entertaining to watch, doesn't require any skill (so
| it isn't fun for me), and is frustrating to the opponent, and
| hence not fun for anyone.
|
| 3. Diablo 2 I have a friend who, in university, was playing
| Diablo 2 in a lab. He found a cheat online that would allow him
| to farm XP (or gold or something - not familiar with the game).
| It was completely automated!
|
| He was playing the meta game very well - he completely automated
| increasing the stats, but he wasn't playing at all. To this day,
| I have no idea why he did that :P
|
| So I guess in conclusion - the rules of any cooperative game are
| designed to get some sort of outcome before receiving a reward.
| If the outcome can be circumvented, but you still get the reward,
| then the rules of the game are not well defined.
|
| In terms of business and finance, playing the meta game too hard
| will corrupt the outcome.
|
| However, since there will always be someone who exploits the lack
| of definition to the rules in specific cases, everyone needs to
| break the rules to compete. The only solution is perfectly
| defined rules - which don't seem to exist when the games are more
| complex.
|
| So moot point lol
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I'm pretty sure I'm not playing the actual game.
| swader999 wrote:
| And then there's Tim Ferris - Chinese National Kickboxing
| Champion: https://www.martialdevelopment.com/how-to-win-
| kickboxing-wro...
| bovermyer wrote:
| The Ferris Strategy:
|
| 1. Dehydrate yourself severely just before weigh-in to
| determine weight class so you weigh in a class below where you
| should be.
|
| 2. Rehydrate before the match and just push your opponent out
| of the ring.
|
| In some circles, this is known as "cheating."
| Justsignedup wrote:
| The problem is that this article is true.
|
| I see people make ethical companies, and they fail and other
| exploiting every single thing laws, workers, customers, to the
| extreme and succeed.
|
| There has to be more than just playing to win. And it's not a
| scrub thing to look at the slackers and say that while they won,
| is that a good thing? So many dead, so much destruction of lives,
| all so one family can reel in the cash.
|
| The best values companies seem to be those that throw out some
| morality in favor of market advantages. So I guess I see why they
| are winning, I just don't like it.
| clipradiowallet wrote:
| Try intraday stock/futures/forex trading... it will quickly break
| the "scrub" mentality the author talks about. You either play to
| win, or you run out of money and can't play anymore.
| Tarsul wrote:
| this article reminds me of the soccer players who fake injuries
| just so the clock runs out while ahead (although extra time is
| added, usually not enough). This is very apparent when looking at
| Spain or Italy, not so much (in) other countries. And, it's worth
| it. Yes, they are hated much more, but they win more, too. And
| that's what counts (for them).
|
| Still happy that my teams don't do this (as much). Wish the rules
| would be changed (only count time when the ball is in play,
| that's the only rule change needed. Very simple.).
| rmellow wrote:
| And that is why I rarely watch FIFA games these days.
| Punishment for this behavior should be way more strict, it's
| ruining the sport.
|
| Neymar certainly didn't invent it, nor is he the only one, but
| he's infamous for these shenanigans. Can't wait for him to
| retire.
|
| Curiously, women's soccer has less of this behavior, making for
| a better show of sportsmanship.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I play to play in a sense for a different reason: I didn't get to
| choose to be here (as far as I can tell) and what is winning
| anyway?
|
| Winning is achieving your goals. Maybe your goal isn't money, or
| to dominate a market or whatever. So to me, winning is setting
| your own goal and then trying to achieve that. In a game with no
| clear rules, as most games in life are, letting everyone else set
| your goals for you is deciding to lose from the outset, no matter
| how much better you are at their game, you're losing _your_ game.
| CarVac wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8llYT7KGdI
|
| The most beautiful games are where in the top skill echelon,
| people who play to play can beat the players who would stop at
| nothing to win.
| AutumnCurtain wrote:
| For DotA 2, Wings Gaming at the 2016 International is often
| highlighted as a favorite team, because they not only won, they
| did it in their own way, with style and flair.
| didntknowya wrote:
| I especially liked one of the qualifiers where one of the pro
| team did a pacifist strategy where they actively avoided
| killing any enemy heroes and pushed to win the game in 20 min
| ravitation wrote:
| This is an important idea in game design, even for games that
| aren't explicitly competitive.
|
| What players enjoy doing (i.e. playing to play) should (mostly)
| converge with what players do to optimize for some goal (i.e.
| playing to win).
| f0e4c2f7 wrote:
| > make sure you're playing the real game, not some more
| complicated game you've made up for yourself
|
| Life is full of games, an infinite number really. They're all
| made up. Most of them have some kind of value. There is no single
| "real" game in my mind.
|
| People just get that idea because they ran into a game called
| Money or a game called Status or whatever it may be that seems
| all encompassing.
|
| Playing for the sake of play is often how you mine games for
| strategies that are useful for winning later. These strategies
| are hard to find if you don't have a commitment to goofing
| around.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm learning how to play the piano and I think I've experienced
| both sides of this philosophy:
|
| Side A) I took a piece of music that I really liked and I wrote
| out every single note on the sheet music, made countless notes
| about what to do and where, all to reduce the problem down to
| practice and memorization. And within 2 weeks of owning a piano
| I'm almost in tears at how beautiful I can make the instrument
| sound every night. This is the "remember why you're playing"
| part.
|
| Side B) Almost everything about how I approached Side A did NOT
| help me with learning the next piece. I still didn't have any
| practice with reading music. So I had to go back to the start
| and "do it properly". This is the "mine the game for useful
| strategies to win later".
|
| The conclusion I came to is that BOTH are important. A showed
| me that it's not magic, and I can do it. B equipped me with the
| tools to get good. And I think you need to balance doing both:
| you want to get better at a good rate, but you don't want to
| become miserable because you're "losing" all the time.
|
| I think I could apply this to lots of things: Just make your
| website or application even if the code is a nightmare. Build
| that garage cabinet even if you waste lumber and screw up the
| joinery. Get yourself excited. Teach yourself that you can do
| it. Give yourself the motivation and fuel to go back to Side B
| and learn all the secrets of your craft.
|
| P.S. I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but for the
| overwhelming majority of people on this planet, money is NOT a
| game because eating and housing is not a game.
| mrbonner wrote:
| Ha! Are you me? I'm also learning to play the piano for the
| last 2 years. I play almost the easiest pieces of J.S.B like
| minuets or simpler arias and sarabande. Just like you, I
| printed the sheets out and annotate the heck out of it:
| notes, fingering. And just like you, every new piece is a
| relearn from scratch!. I think I can live with it. I am happy
| with what I could do now. It's better than the Synthesis
| (Guitar Hero of pianos) where I didn't know the notes at all.
|
| I'm forcing myself to read sheet now and it could be taking
| longer since I am not practicing hours a day. I find myself
| often phrase (F-A-C-E or All-Good-Boys-Deserved-Fudge).
|
| Overall, learning this new hobby is a changing my life. I
| just discovered the entire new universe of language that has
| been used for hundreds of years. The down side now is that it
| is pretty depressing to listen to any of the current pop
| culture music again.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| One thing that's helping me a lot is spending five minutes
| many times a day with a $2 app called Piano Tutor.
|
| It's a game simply presents a note on a staff and you need
| to press the right key.
|
| About an hour of it so far and I'm way way faster at
| reading music.
| f0e4c2f7 wrote:
| This maps to how I've learned a lot of things. The first time
| I learned how to make a webapp I did it with cgi-bin and bash
| or something even though even at that time there were much
| better ways of doing it. Being able to see the whole thing
| working end to end was really valuable for my mental models
| even if I had to sub out most parts of the model as I learned
| more.
|
| As an aside, I doubt this has any direct practical
| application to piano but one of my favorite posts on the
| internet is about learning piano in an unusual way (applies
| to learning generally):
|
| https://sive.rs/kimo
| mcguire wrote:
| Life is a self-graded test.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Until you get married.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > There is no single "real" game in my mind.
|
| This article is about different, individual games, and
| characterizes styles of play that are reflected across them. It
| isn't claiming that there is only one game.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I think it's implicit in the article that "winning" the game
| of Business means making as much money as possible. The
| author briefly contemplates whether having empathy for your
| customers would make them a scrub, but then veers off into a
| tangent about maestros.
|
| GP is saying that there's not really a game of Business with
| a singular agreed-upon win condition. John Malone's strategy
| was maximizing his company's dominance, but it doesn't mean
| that anyone who doesn't is a scrub. They're just playing a
| different game.
|
| According to the article, Martine Rothblatt built a highly
| successful business in United Therapeutics _and_ saved her
| daughter 's life. Consider alternate realities in which only
| one of those events happened. Which do you think she would
| choose?
| Fnoord wrote:
| A game or competition like judo has a clear set of rules
| and outcome.
|
| With regards to business there is so much more than short
| term benefit. For example, these cable companies monopolies
| had low customer satisfaction, and I believe firmly it
| damages their reputation on the long term. But short term
| thinking doesn't care for that. So it becomes a kind of
| game like who's the best functioning psychopath. Good luck
| playing that game if you're not a psychopath (there's a
| reason these are highly represented in e.g. Wall Street).
|
| In my opinion the CEO of Qwest won. He stood for a
| principle, he decided with his heart. That's a winning move
| in a tough, heartless world. A noble sacrifice, like Obi
| Wan.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm not even playing. I'm straight up losing and getting heckled
| by the drunks on the sidelines.
| jbellis wrote:
| Makes me happy to see the classic Sirlin article applied to
| business.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| The Sirlin article, for the curious:
| https://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win
| eqmvii wrote:
| Reminds me of "Remember, the enemy's gate is down" from Ender's
| Game.
|
| It's interesting when it's applicable... but I think it's rare.
| Yes, you can sometimes find hidden opportunities to compete on a
| different axis than the establishment, but more often time and
| competition have hardened whatever problem you're looking at
| against these kinds of side vectors.
| ScottStevenson wrote:
| This is basically the Sirlin article
| (https://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win) applied to
| sports and business.
|
| It applies to product development too. Obsessing over "doing the
| things the right way", "using the right tools", "100% test
| coverage" is not enough to create a winning product. It is very
| easy for engineering teams to get caught up in those intermediate
| goals rather than the actual goal. I'd say it's one of the most
| common reasons technical founders fail.
|
| Then you have hackers like Pieter Levels making millions/year
| with a single gigantic PHP file on a single server.
|
| I wrote a bit about this and my startup journey here:
| https://medium.com/@scott.stevenson/how-to-finally-make-some...
| patentatt wrote:
| I used to play video games with a friend of mine, particularly
| Red Alert (2?). He played every time with some BS rush or mass
| unit tactic while I would construct an elaborate base and have
| balanced fighting forces that looked cool. He won just about
| every match, and would delight in my rage quitting after a hoard
| of attack dogs or flying saucers would destroy my beautiful base.
| I remember being so frustrated that 'he wasn't playing fair' or
| 'correctly.' I pursued varied interests in life, have bounced
| around careers and academia looking for meaning or virtue or
| something while he graduated with a C average and worked in an
| 'easy' field (according to my misplaced sense of superiority,
| that is). He climbed the ladder at some consulting firm (again,
| ladder climbing being something I express disdain for, rightly or
| wrongly) and is now quite well off, definitely makes more money
| than I do and has a much larger house and fancy cars, etc. He had
| and has a knack for winning over aesthetics or side-games, while
| I seem to only see the latter. Self-imposed morality or ethics
| especially. I like who I am, and I'm comfortable with my life
| choices, but there are definitely times I wish I was more like
| him.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| I love the Lesley koan at the start of this, but then the rest
| completely loses me.
|
| As a player of Ultimate myself, I take this somewhat personally.
| I know people who love spending a lot of time trying to force
| strategies and learn codes for communication, but in the end it
| really just depends on what your goals as a group are. Are you
| _practicing_ or are you _playing_. Practice only really pays off
| later, while playing is that juicy instant gratification. Same
| concepts holds for learning an instrument, or any skill really.
|
| I'll just leave another quote here on the subject: "Work hard,
| Play hard".
| speeder wrote:
| This article made me remember some Sumo shenanigans.
|
| Basically Sumo everyone is very heavy because there is no weight
| class system, when a guy became Yokozuna while NOT being fat,
| others complained, and the organization had to point out to the
| bothers that there are no rules saying you must be heavy... so if
| you can win while being light, that is not an issue.
|
| Other one is a Yokozuna that got infamous for winning a lot by
| doing cheap moves, he looked more like he was fighting Muay Thai
| than sumo, often winning by elboing opponents or dodging and
| letting them fall on their own. Since Yokozuna not only is a
| title but a job with specific requeriments (Yokozuna are people
| with the job of showing off sumo in public appearances when the
| Emperor of Japan is present), the guy got a warning that if he
| kept winning his fights with this boring style (because his
| fights often would last 3 seconds or so...) he would get
| punished.
| csa wrote:
| Do you have names for these folks?
|
| I'm guessing Chiyonofuji (popularized sumo in the 80s) and
| Hakuho (current Yokozuna and most yusho of all time)... two of
| the greatest Yokozuna of all time.
|
| If so, calling these "shenanigans" is overstating the issue.
| That said, it's an interesting comparison.
| throwdecro wrote:
| Scrubs may be playing to play, and competitors may be playing to
| win, but only griefers are setting their own terms.
| draw_down wrote:
| It's taking the game and making it part of a different game:
| pissing off people who are entirely too serious. Humorously the
| anti-scrub logic still works, you're still only doing things
| that are allowed in the game.
| dmoy wrote:
| > Preferably, you wanted to win with strategies that were
| technically sophisticated and elegant and difficult to do.
|
| You see this a lot in competitive fencing once people start
| getting ratings, but aren't really yet top end. They do
| technically difficult stuff, and it works at that level.
|
| Then when you get past that, it goes back to being nearly 100%
| just footwork. The fancy bladework mostly disappears (except for
| the occasional kerfuffle in a point once in awhile). No elaborate
| parries. Disengages almost entirely disappear too. Just footwork.
| dmoy wrote:
| We're going to ignore the brief period of insanity a couple
| decades back in foil during the dark times of The Flick
| jgwil2 wrote:
| Interesting that in video gaming, there's a derogatory term for
| people who eschew the "cheap" moves, whereas in tennis, the
| derogatory term ("pusher") refers to the players who embrace the
| "cheap" moves. Pushers are players who run down every ball and
| hit moonballs and lobs until their opponent gets frustrated and
| makes an error. There are two reasons, I think, that many tennis
| players look down on pushers: firstly, because they're no fun to
| play, and secondly, because they seem to value winning at any
| cost over refining mastery of the fundamentals. We (non-pushers)
| tend to think that we have a higher "ceiling" than pushers, even
| if they are beating us. So maybe it's just a culture difference
| between tennis players and video game players on what they choose
| to value. (Of course, there are plenty of tennis players who will
| acknowledge the tactical soundness and game smarts of pushers
| too).
| ravitation wrote:
| I think Sirlin's definition of a "scrub" is interesting, and
| certainly useful (in that it describes a type of player that
| exists), but I wouldn't read too much culturally into that
| definition.
|
| It might have something resembling that meaning in the Street
| Fighter community (though, as far as I know, it's still way
| more general than described in this article), but, for video
| games in general, it is mostly used to mean "just a bad
| player."
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| I guess it could also refer to hanging out the passenger side
| of your best friends ride
| dsclough wrote:
| The "pusher" is reminiscent of hungrybox's jigglypuff in the
| melee scene and the widespread distaste in the playstyle among
| other players
| nwatson wrote:
| It seems a "pusher" would only get so far with that approach,
| and their approach isn't compatible with getting to higher
| tiers of the game. The pusher uses a greedy algorithm to get to
| a local maximum.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| That's true, that's why I say pushers have a lower ceiling.
| But it takes an awful lot of time, practice, skill and
| conditioning to get to higher tiers of the game, so even
| modestly skilled pushers can beat up on a lot of people.
| bongcloud420 wrote:
| There are a lot of gaming terms. I play a lot of fighting games
| like street fighter and I think the comparable term to "pusher"
| would be "masher", as in you're mashing the buttons.
|
| Typically used as an insult by someone that just lost to
| another player that didn't play the way "they should have
| played".
| Jensson wrote:
| Cheesers are not looked on well in gaming either. Just doing
| cheap moves over and over will net you a few easy wins but
| quickly get you to a level where everyone knows how to counter
| cheese.
|
| Scrubs aren't people who don't do cheap moves, scrubs are those
| who refuse to learn how to beat cheap moves and try to get
| others to stop doing them. In fact scrubs often do cheap moves
| and will get angry at you if you perform the counter to his
| cheap move, calling your counter cheap and instead wanting you
| to fall for his cheap move. That isn't fun for anyone.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| Sounds like cheeser is a pretty good equivalent to pusher,
| although it does actually take a pretty high skill level to
| beat a good pusher in tennis. In that sense they're a good
| test of your level.
|
| Sounds like scrubs are just complainers. A friend of mine who
| played soccer told me that the least fun teams to play
| against were those who would just immediately start
| complaining to the ref about everything.
| a-dub wrote:
| if you ever wake up and find yourself idolizing a sleazy cable
| company executive in the service of justifying some of your own
| aggressive and quasi-ethical behaviors in business to yourself,
| then there's no point in playing anything anymore, you've already
| lost the most important game you will ever play.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think we need to stop blaming the failures of systems on lone
| psychopaths. There is a neverending supply of psychopaths. The
| problem is building and retaining systems that reward
| destructive behavior.
|
| "Admiration" might go too far, but there's got to be a word for
| admiring ability aside from its consequence.
|
| edit: I'm constantly annoyed by the way that we somehow blamed
| the Theranos debacle, something in which a thousand people were
| involved with and profited from, on one strange woman who was a
| _teenager_ at its inception. There 's an endless supply of
| strange teenagers. You can either destroy all of them as a
| prophylactic or figure out what's wrong with the system that
| enables one to assemble a multi-billion dollar fraud if you
| want to prevent the same from happening in the future.
|
| Or you can pretend that something is solved after you punish
| the teenager, and remain surrounded in fraud.
| a-dub wrote:
| "don't hate the playa, hate the game"? nah. playing dirty is
| a form of cheating.
|
| how about "don't idolize or admire people who play dirty or
| aspire to and try to drag everything into the muck in order
| to justify or cover up their own dirty play"?
| halfcreative wrote:
| >playing dirty is a form of cheating. this is the scrub
| mentality that the article talks about
| a-dub wrote:
| cheaters only cheat because they know they're too
| mediocre to ever succeed legitimately.
|
| it's kinda like "i thought i was so bad at everything
| that the only way i thought i could succeed was to
| repackage nicotine with candy flavors and sell it to
| children"
| sgt101 wrote:
| If you play to win it can stop being a game really fast. And if
| you let life become serious it can stop really fast too.
| fspacef wrote:
| I already won + playing means winning
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(page generated 2021-09-21 23:02 UTC)