How to play with people who are better than you
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How to play with people who are better than you
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Re: How to play with people who are better than you
#2the author is focused on finite games, which are games that you play to win. but it's interesting to think about applying the same logic to infinite games, where the goal is to keep playing forever.
For instance, capitalism is a game that most players assume we'll just keep playing. How do you deal with some players having an advantage? Currently, the advantage only compounds (literally, ie compound interest). What if instead, the game became more difficult for those players, as discussed in the article?
Re: How to play with people who are better than you
#3I never liked the idea of explicitly changing the rules in order to make a game more fair for new players. If you become accustomed to changing the rules whenever you find yourself outmatched, and then find yourself in a situation where the rules can't be changed for whatever reason, then you're not going to enjoy yourself.
It's much more enjoyable for everyone, in my opinion, to play by the same rules as the group, but judge your own performance by a different set of rules that you keep in your own head. Maybe try to beat your own previous score, or set yourself a personal challenge -- something like "take one of my opponent's pieces" or "make the longest word in the game".
It's entirely possible to enjoy playing a game that you have little chance of winning, it just requires some creativity.
Re: How to play with people who are better than you
#4Playing with people who are better than you is easy. Just accept they're better than you and keep losing.
Decide if you are comfortable with your current skill level or not. If you want to get better, train up. If you are happy with your skill level, then keep losing. That's fine, and I think its healthy to decide to place limits on your skill.
Skill is an infinite treadmill: you can continuously get better at pretty much any subject from now till the end of time. Deciding when to get off the treadmill is just as important as deciding to stay on.
> Games of skill are less appealing if you know a certain person will always win.
I disagree. I will always lose to Magnus Carlsen in Chess. I will always lose to my friends in (insert any FPS game here, I'm bad at all of them). I will always lose to Mew2King in Super Smash Bros: Melee.
My inability to defeat the greatest players of a subject does NOT make the game less appealing. Indeed, I often times seek out the challenge of stronger players, especially when I'm explicitly trying to get better at the game.
Losing constantly by playing vs players who are better than you provides a learning experience. You should find other players you can win against of course: you'll never learn to win if you keep losing. But losing teaches you what bad-habits you've formed from playing vs weaker players.
I think that's the key: losing all the time is unfun. But I can definitely take "losing for a whole week" or "losing for a whole month" in a row, especially if its for training. Finding players of lower skill, equal skill, and higher skill, is important.
Re: How to play with people who are better than you
#5the author is focused on finite games, which are games that you play to win. but it's interesting to think about applying the same logic to infinite games, where the goal is to keep playing forever. For instance, capitalism is a game that most players assume we'll just keep playing. How do you deal with some players having an advantage? Currently, the advantage only compounds (literally, ie compound interest). What i…
I think you're basically describing egalitarianism, correct me if I'm wrong. I'd recommend Rawls as good philosophical material on the subject. Always been how I view the world personally and I think people underestimate how much of it could be compatible with free markets and a good deal of general and important freedoms. Of course that's a much longer debate.
To get back to the point, what the author describing is also egalitarian. I think people are generally more interested in it with a game because of the finite setting. Golf handicaps are a perfect example that would have fit well into the article. People get more wary as the scope expands.
Re: How to play with people who are better than you
#6the author is focused on finite games, which are games that you play to win. but it's interesting to think about applying the same logic to infinite games, where the goal is to keep playing forever. For instance, capitalism is a game that most players assume we'll just keep playing. How do you deal with some players having an advantage? Currently, the advantage only compounds (literally, ie compound interest). What i…
Is capitalism actually assumed to go on forever though? The idea of a post scarcity society isn't new. Hell, Marx's presentation of how communism would arise was largely rooted in the idea that capitalism would increase efficiency to the point that it would no longer make sense to follow its model any longer.
Re: How to play with people who are better than you
#7I never liked the idea of explicitly changing the rules in order to make a game more fair for new players. If you become accustomed to changing the rules whenever you find yourself outmatched, and then find yourself in a situation where the rules can't be changed for whatever reason, then you're not going to enjoy yourself. It's much more enjoyable for everyone, in my opinion, to play by the same rules as the group,…
I wish more people would take this lesson to heart, not just in games but in life.
Re: How to play with people who are better than you
#8the author is focused on finite games, which are games that you play to win. but it's interesting to think about applying the same logic to infinite games, where the goal is to keep playing forever. For instance, capitalism is a game that most players assume we'll just keep playing. How do you deal with some players having an advantage? Currently, the advantage only compounds (literally, ie compound interest). What i…
To continue the game theory tilt, the problem with making the game harder as the player advantage increases is that it disincentivises the player from seeking advantage at all.
In the theoretical game of "capitalism" this sounds like a good idea, but in the real world a government that imposes these kinds of game restrictions through something like taxes only forces the advantaged players to pull out of the "game" completely (a nett negative for those reliant on their advantage long term) and move their advantage to another "game".
This isn't necessarily a bad thing though, so long as the vast majority of players still in the game have enough resource to continue playing comfortably.
Re: How to play with people who are better than you
#9I never liked the idea of explicitly changing the rules in order to make a game more fair for new players. If you become accustomed to changing the rules whenever you find yourself outmatched, and then find yourself in a situation where the rules can't be changed for whatever reason, then you're not going to enjoy yourself. It's much more enjoyable for everyone, in my opinion, to play by the same rules as the group,…
Changing the rules mid game is not what’s being described here. Rather it’s redesigning games such that a equilibrium of sorts lasts for longer even in the presence of mixed ability, sustaining engagement for longer
Re: How to play with people who are better than you
#10No mention of go and it's handicap system. I once watched 12 year old Japanese girl wipe the floor with an Australian friend with ranking in the Australian go scene, in a go club behind Tokyo station.