enjoyable competitive gaming is like prisonner's dilemma

[Don]

This is sort of inspired by the other article about how some research showed if you go out and abuse tricks and gank people, then people tend to hate you even though your personal enjoyment probably went up. I'll first by assuming that there exists no game out there that is perfectly balanced that you cannot do something unintended for an unfair advantage. Yet, like prisonner's dilemma, cheating only works if you're the only one cheating. If everyone else cheats as well, then you no longer gain any advantage and the playing experience is obviously diminished for all.

For example let's take RTS. An obvious example would be if you maphack in Starcraft you obviously have an advantage over those who don't, but eventually that just means everyone maphacks. Or, you could memorize the layout of a map like Lost Temple and get really good at it, but again eventually people catch on and will just avoid playing games on Lost Temple, or be forced to memorize the map layout themselves. There's also stories of certain map having very gimmicky strategy that only works on that map, and some players only play on these maps.

I went back to ROTK 11 and I realize this is even true in a game with unlimited vision. In ROTK 11 you got no fog of war, so you can see every unit in the game from any arbitrary distance. Also, if a unit starts to march toward your territory you'll get a warning no matter how far away they are. But, you can counter this by ordering a unit to march to one square away from your territory. So, if you're playing against another human player, the strategy would be to always march your army one square before his territory, or just manually move them so it never triggers the alarm. Sure, you still cannot hide these troops, but there is a ton of stuff going on each turn in ROTK 11, so there's a good chance the other guy will miss it if he didn't get the warning.

Yet what happens if you pull this off a few times with success? Well this is a turn-based game, which means instead of taking 3 minutes to do a turn, your opponent will now take an extra 15 minutes to scan the entire map to make sure nobody is trying to sneak in an army somewhere. And now you've gained nothing for your sneak attack except lengthing the time it takes to play the game by about 5 times.

It seems to me common rules and etiquette evolve in any competitive game of any complexity, simply because it'd be really stupid if everyone is forced to use maphack or play the same class in a MMORPG to stand a chance. It might not be 'intended' in the sense that developers didn't say these should be the way the game is played, but I think a lot of games would be unplayable, or at least not remotely enjoyable, without these self-imposed rules.

[Kupek]

I think perfectly balanced games can exist, they're just orders of magnitude more simple than the videogames we play. Chess and checkers are perfectly balanced games - there's no legal move you can do in either that people would call a "dick move."

The problem is that we've all played chess, and we want to play something different. But like a set of simultaneous equations, the more we add, the harder it becomes to solve.

I do agree that what you're describing is inevitable with games that are so complex they can't be perfectly balanced. I suspect that with our old games - like chess, checkers, various card games and sports - the rules we have now are just a formalization of the informal rules people stumbled upon through trial and error that were needed for a balanced game.

Aside: that games like chess and checkers have simple rules was a requirement because humans needed to "compute" game status on the fly, in their head, with the aid of physical markers. Videogames give us the opportunity to explore games with rule sets that are far too complex for humans to compute on the fly, but that introduces the set of problems we've discussed before.

[Don]

A perfectly balanced game would probably be too simple to be competitive. I mean rock paper scissors is perfectly balanced but it wouldn't be too interesting to play as a competitive game.

I do think some games are needlessly complex which makes balancing even more of a nightmare.

[Kupek]

A perfectly balanced game would probably be too simple to be competitive. I mean rock paper scissors is perfectly balanced but it wouldn't be too interesting to play as a competitive game.

I think perfectly balanced games can exist, they're just orders of magnitude more simple than the videogames we play. Chess and checkers are perfectly balanced games - there's no legal move you can do in either that people would call a "dick move."

[Don]

Even chess and checkers aren't balanced. The guy going first has a significant advantage.

Maybe something like Tetris can be considered to be balanced and competitive.

[Kupek]

But the advantage conferred by going first is negligible compared to the advantage an experienced player has. Put another way, player skill is the biggest determining factor in the outcome, not order of play.