Versus!

Competitive gaming is an interesting subject. It has existed since the first days of head to head play and high score competition in arcades, but in the grand scheme of things that’s been a relatively short period of time, about 40 years or so. In that time competitive gaming has grown by leaps and bounds, and not just in a professional sense. Sure, there are gaming tournaments now that offer millions of dollars in prizes, and games that support millions of players in competitive environments, but video games as a medium of competition still have a long way to go.

Competition in numerous forms has existed longer than human society has. It can be used to settle conflicts, to entertain, or to communicate, but all forms of human competition have been bound by one thing; arbitrary rules. Rules are important, they are the only things that keep society from collapsing into roaming gangs of murderers, and by extension competition needs rules as well. These rules are generally a good thing, as they establish a fair and balanced metric for use in determining victory, but that does not mean that they aren’t still totally arbitrary. The only reason a quarterback doesn’t punch and kick his way through the defensive line is because there are rules against it, just like how the only thing stopping a particularly jealous ex-boyfriend from kidnapping his former girlfriend are the laws that call that act illegal and the police force who enforce those laws. These rules create important boundaries in both games and in life, for the safety and fairness of everyone.

As a result of these rules, human beings become very adjusted to limiting and controlling themselves on a daily basis. Learning what the rules of life are, why they are important, and how to avoid breaking them is one of the most important parts of becoming a member of a society. In a way, all of the bad things that happen in society are the result of someone breaking the rules. Unfortunately, this leads to a fundamental problem when it comes to competition in video games, because video games have their own rules, and don’t need the players to enforce them.

This is very weird if you aren't prepared for it. Even other games, like board or card games, have established rules that you can break if you know what you’re doing. You can’t cheat a computer program, it literally cannot do things it wasn't programmed to do. You can exploit glitches, sure, but those are things that are very specific, and achieve a specific result, in a way they are just as much a part of the program as the non-glitch parts are. This results in a whole lot of new rules and problems that don’t exist anywhere else. Because the physics of the universe are set in stone from a gameplay perspective, it’s up to balance testers and programmers to fix problems that arise in the rules. You’ll see that in online or ongoing games, where routine patches are commonplace. It takes a lot of creativity to create a network of rules that result in a balanced competitive environment. Imagine if the referees and officials could manipulate physics for the duration of sports games, and how much work would have to go in to maintaining a system like that.

Additionally, people are bound to find this type of game difficult, seeing as there has never been anything like it in human history. Video games exist in a world where all the rules of the game a built right in, and there are no "honor rules". Anything that isn't allowed by the rules of the game is simply impossible to do. This is why you get lots of cases of people enacting their own honor rules in video games. Things like no rushing in real time strategy games, or no spamming in fighting games. Humans are used to having to live by arbitrary rules, and the lack of them can be startling to some people.

Just a random thought I had.