Another oft-cited post on the subject is Sirlin’s “Introducing...the Scrub”. This one comes from the context of fighting games. A scrub is a player who is consistently defeated by moves that he (the scrub) rejects as “cheap” or “boring”. The scrub loses because he has handicapped himself by forgoing certain winning moves; whether by not learning them, or by not executing them when given the chance.
I think this really points at different motivations, though. Sometimes a person finds themselves playing a competitive game when really they just want to be playing a game as an activity. They’re looking for recreation or imagination, not competition: they’re playing catch or playing pretend, not playing pro sports.
The designers of Magic describe three different “player psychographics”, only one of which (“Spike”) is about playing to win. They know that the audience for their game includes a lot of people who are not there to be maximally competitive. The other sorts of players are not going to win tournaments against the Spikes, but they’re going to have a good time playing on the kitchen table.
It’s okay for the game makers and players to have different maps of the player base, though. For the makers of a commercial game, it would be bad business sense to build only for Spikes, because they can sell more product if non-Spikes have a good time too. But for a competitive player who’s striving to improve, there’s some reason to label some other players as “scrubs” — because defeating them doesn’t teach you much.
Another oft-cited post on the subject is Sirlin’s “Introducing...the Scrub”. This one comes from the context of fighting games. A scrub is a player who is consistently defeated by moves that he (the scrub) rejects as “cheap” or “boring”. The scrub loses because he has handicapped himself by forgoing certain winning moves; whether by not learning them, or by not executing them when given the chance.
I think this really points at different motivations, though. Sometimes a person finds themselves playing a competitive game when really they just want to be playing a game as an activity. They’re looking for recreation or imagination, not competition: they’re playing catch or playing pretend, not playing pro sports.
The designers of Magic describe three different “player psychographics”, only one of which (“Spike”) is about playing to win. They know that the audience for their game includes a lot of people who are not there to be maximally competitive. The other sorts of players are not going to win tournaments against the Spikes, but they’re going to have a good time playing on the kitchen table.
It’s okay for the game makers and players to have different maps of the player base, though. For the makers of a commercial game, it would be bad business sense to build only for Spikes, because they can sell more product if non-Spikes have a good time too. But for a competitive player who’s striving to improve, there’s some reason to label some other players as “scrubs” — because defeating them doesn’t teach you much.
Oh gosh, how irksome if Magic neurotypes its players like that.
Sirlin writes only of denial of one’s weakness, not of a “need to lose”.