Article on Concerns about Competitive Play

Netrunner General
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Really good read indeed.I read pretty much all the replies here and reread the article.While I still agree that there should be no line drawn between casual and competitive players (serious,who doesn’t want to get better in the game they love?),but I finally found myself do not agree the most part of that article.At the first glance it seems have some point,and I thought that article is mean to counter the traditional “competitve vs casual” argument,then I just feel like I was reading some political argument about (somehow invented) privilege and entitlement.By finishing the article I just feel a sense of weirdness.It’s a deep analysis about a bunch of nonsense.Turns out it’s just an article that is too sensitive about everything someone dislike,and judging by the words like “privilege” and “enetitlement” (sounds familiar huh?),I guess it’s just whining on a whole new level.

Final statement:
The replies to this article are more worth reading than the actual article.

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This came up a few times in the thread and confused me so I thought I’d draw it out; why does the term privilege seem inappropriate here? My understanding of the notion of privilege is that it is some benefit one has, and in the modern social context privilege is also connoted to mean a benefit one has that others in the community don’t and one needs to work to notice one’s own privilege. It seems perfectly appropriate here when applied to the author’s argument about the competitive play style being catered to in terms of organized play.

The primary method of organized play in this game is arguably the Tournament structure, which by design aims to get players into competitive contests with each other. Prizes and esteem are granted to players who are able to take on the field and prevail, whereas players who cannot usually are down a few bucks and several losses. Nothing is inherently wrong with this at all and I love attending our local tournaments and have even travelled a little this year to attend ANRPC events in my area. They’re totally awesome. That said, it must be acknowledged that tournaments are not designed for the benefit of non-competitive players (this is a ‘duh’ statement). If our default means of organizing players is geared towards competitive play, it’s a structural privilege of competitive players. The term feels entirely appropriate.

To counter the notion of “tournaments work that way because that’s just how games work”, it’s entirely possible to have Netrunner oriented events that are not based around competitive play. The SMC Circuit finals took this to heart by having some really neat side events including cosplay and challenge decks. KOS will surely be very challenging from a play standpoint but no one would argue that all the decks will be competitive; in fact they can’t be by design (sorry Weyland players). Vanilla tournaments aren’t the only way to play, so having the default community organizing activity be vanilla tournaments is a privilege for competitive players, who prefer that arena to other options.

Being privileged doesn’t mean one is bad. It just means that it’s worth paying attention to and considering the effects it has on less privileged members of a community. In this case, it seems rather clear to me that competitive players are privileged by the culture and structures that Netrunner exists in. Why the objection to the term?

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For all the flak the article has taken, I think I should concede he makes a couple of good arguments, despite being wildly off the mark about the competitive community in general.

(1) I think we are somewhat privileged/entitled. I certainly have felt entitled in the past, (why can’t US regional winners get more!?). We put in a lot of work to getting better at the game, and many of us do things to give back to the competitive community, but we do take for granted that FFG’s OP efforts are pretty much all put towards tournaments.

(2) As much as we as competitive players might feel like we don’t get as much support as we should from FFG, casual players get less support. Many of us see our groups failing to grow as the monetary and time barriers to entry to the competitive scene get higher, and that’s a problem for the long-term health of the game and everyone that plays it.

Personally, I would like to see FFG move away from GNKs and towards some kind of supported Netrunner leagues. GNKs are fine and everything, but enthusiasm for them is generally pretty low, the prizes are abundant and recycled, and the same players often win them over and over again. With the expansion of the ANRPC, it would make me really happy if FFG could turn their efforts towards growing the casual player base and work with us to provide more competitive play opportunities. GNKs are the most casual level of FFG supported event and if it’s the opinion of casual players that the tournament format goes counter to how they want to play the game, (I don’t actually know if this is the case), then I don’t think the competitive players would much miss the abundance of low-stakes, low-competition tournament-style events.

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I guess the problem is nowadays the word “privilege” is just overused and it turns to be used in a more negative way,thus to put it in here sounds a little harsh,maybe “advantage” is a better word I think?
Maybe special prize for the non-competitive player to encourage them to join tournaments,but my point is this:**whether we are competitive or not,just sit down,enjoy it,have fun.**It should be the core spirit of every tournament of Netrunner,Rather than changing the structure,I think the true direction we need is to create such an atmosphere in every tournament.
And FFG should consider to change some of there tournament format,provide more competitive play opportunitis but also provide support for the casual player base.

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The Madison team had been kicking around being team Mushin, but we will probably not end up doing it.

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I agree with this 100%

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But that sounds awesome! Weyland could do blue sun off the grid, NBN could do ghost branch/midseasons crap, HB can do man up, overwriter! and Jinteki…can do whatever it likes :wink:

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thank you for this post, pretty much summed up everything I wanted to say.

“Privileged” and “entitled” certainly are loaded words these days, simply because they are mostly used to describe social justice issues. Their common connotations (generally negative) don’t make them inaccurate when not used in that way:

  • if you are in a NASCAR stadium, you have more privileges if you are NASCAR fan than if you are not as they are going to cater to the desires of people who want to be there.

  • If you always get a free sandwich when you fill out your punch card at the sub shop, the next time you fill one out you’ll feel entitled to a free sandwich.

both of these example are perfectly fine; you’re not a bad person in either of them for having privileges or feeling entitled. This is the way I think the author was trying to use these words.

Regardless of what gets lost in communication, his point is sound: 99% or more of official event support for the game goes to top-down somebody-wins-and-somebody-loses tournament formats. Even GNKs have graded prize “levels.” It’s not that a casual player can’t have fun at this kind of event (obviously, many of us do) it’s just that it doesn’t offer anything to us beyond a chance to get some games in.

I’d love to see more events geared towards weird formats, or with specifically non-top down structures. I’d much a prefer, for example, a GNK with equal numbers of two prizes versus the tiered prizes. I’d love to go to a huge con like GenCon and decide that this year I’d rather play in the official FFG goofy-format round-robin netrunner meetup (9-2,pre-register to come and go as you please) than play 5 rounds of nationals before dropping from competition exhaustion.

Last thing I’ll say, while many of us here are the “it’s fine, I still have fun at tournaments” type of casual, I think there are many gamers and potential gamers that the competition-focused events simply hold zero interest for. Netrunner is my wife’s favorite game, bar none, but she does not play in tournaments. with our friends, she’ll play all day. with strangers at the store on national board game day, she’ll play all day. add a ranking system and crown a winner? she’s not interested, not even small GNKs, not even once in a while. While there’s a whole plethora of reasons (which is the topic for a whole other post, probably in a whole other forum), but one thing is clear: there is no such thing as a FFG OP event that is designed for a player like her.

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The problem is that a league needs more work, both from FFG and the local store. Yes, it is much better than a GNK. Can FFG and the local store support it though?

I am also hoping for a league structure although my meatspace playing time is severely restricted due to RL, since this is what will bring new players to the game, constant exposure to the game we love.

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I’m not sold on creating competitive environments or FFG events to solve the issues you guys are highlighting. There really is something to be said about Netrunner on the porch table, random Thursday night, 2 glasses and 1/2 bottle of whiskey. That’s when you jam Fisk and Gov. Takeover Gagarin (though this may very well be closer to dam solid than people think, I digress). Our Thursday night meta is more often about a great meal, good friends and a bottle or two of something, rather than playing cards. But Netrunner is a great thing to do as part of that event. Often that’s really all people want from the game. And more often than not, that is where they are having the most fun. My assertion is that is many peoples favorite way to play (including me), and I don’t rely on FFG to create those situations. I rely on my phone.

For FFG stuff I’m going with a well-prepped ETF and Noise (or insert similar Tier 1 ID of your choice) but I’m not looking at them to create social environments or ‘casual’ competitive environments to grow the game. That isn’t their respo IMO. I think their current formats are excellent, with great prizes and a good competitive tilt. Not to say they can’t be improved, but trying to ‘casualize’ them to appeal to a different set of players is not going to work, nor will it appeal to those kinds of players at all anyway.

Having said that, a sponsored league scenario is a gap I agree needs filling.

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One thing I really didn’t like about the article was their use of entitlement. The competitive community feels entitled. It should be. The casual community feels entitled. It should be. Basically any political movement ever can be described as feeling entitled. The bill of rights can accurately be described as the bill of entitlements. This was even explicit in the Declaration of Independence.

A group of people feeling entitled to something (social security, not being assaulted by cops, freedom) getting organized and demanding things is basically the only way any political movement has ever worked. It is useful and necessary for the competitive community to feel entitled and demand things from ffg. Because that is how you get better ffg support. We shouldn’t feel ashamed for demanding better prize support, we should be proud of it. (It’s both good for ffg, and good for try community) and we should be using the fact the competitive community is important to netrunners success to demand better support to grow the community.

This being said, I think the article has some good points about the fact most tournaments are structured around competitive desires. The casual community should be organizing and making clear demands about what they want from ffg (as well as organizing tournaments and the like in the local level). One thing is that I think it’s harder to organize the casual community because they are inherently less likely to be willing to sink time into it. I think it is correct that the competitive community was semi-blind to the needs of the causal community, and that we should help them build better spaces for them to exist in. (The two communities are not mutually exclusive and feed into each other).

Anyways, we should be pushing ffg to support competitive and casual spaces better, but also recognize that they do more to support the competitive community right now.

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In our FLGS we have a healthy scene. When tournaments are coming up there’s a bias towards competitive decks, but normally people bring their “fun decks” and “proper ones” and you can ask for either.

The store tournaments involve a selection of door prizes too, so random players will get some store credit for showing up, and the better players tend to donate stuff back as well – how many boxes does one really need?

We also do things like Core-only tournaments to give newer players something to go at – it’s a fun nostalgia trip for the rest of us too.

There’s a balance to be had and I don’t think there’s any problem with mixing competitive play with more imaginative play too.

The great thing about the UK Netrunner community (well, one of the many great things) is the amount of proactive people we’ve got creating their own tournaments and the enthusiasm for these. Our sceptred isle is not vast compared to some place, but folk are willing to travel and support each other. Aside from store-led activities, there has been Quinn’s Intercity held in London (team based event, all factions must be represented), the follow up Hadrian’s Wall in Scotland (now about to come to its second event), the BABW (Bring a Brit To Worlds) tied in to NRPC qualifiers and finals (enabling another Brit to get to Worlds by paying for the flights and giving back to local stores by buying other prizes from them). Most recently Richard “Not the one from Top Gear” Hammond has just finished an online auction for ID pairings at a charity event (raising ~$1000) with all kind of random pairings of IDs that anyone with a kind heart and basic understanding of Netrunner could join in on. Lots of interesting prizes and donations from “personalities” on the scene have gone into that too.

Basically I’m saying we make our own fun, with cool prizes too. All we really need from FFG is the ability to get hold of prize support for events. We can organise our own shizzle. Expecting a (relatively small in the grand scale of things) company to provide tons of organised play is perhaps a little unrealistic. Motivated, enthusiastic hobbyists can do that – we just need the alt arts and other cool shiz.

Netrunner, like all hobbies, lives or dies on the community. When we take it upon ourselves to create something it turns our there’s loads of other geeks equally excitable.

People don’t want a high level competitive tournament or scene? Create a “I’m now to all this bobbins” group, or get help from some of the more established members of the scene to give you a boost creating something.

Build it and they will come.

I should be privileged and entitled to more free stuff because I’m prettiest, but FFG have so far ignored my emails. This is my main driver for going to Worlds, so I can seek redress in person for this egregious lack of attention to my wants and needs.

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Surely whether or not any feeling of entitlement is “good” or “bad” is dependent on what you feel entitled to? Whether it’s something you deserve or not?

You might feel entitled to safety from beatings by the police.
You might feel entitled to a personal harem of a thousand virgins to wash your feet and fan you with banana leaves.
You might feel entitles to own slaves.
Surely not all entitlement acts in the same moral direction?

The point being raised by the article (whether you agree with or or not) seemed to be that there might be a feeling of entitlement to an unequal portion of the communal resources (either in terms physical bling from FFG or the time, effort and admiration of individual Netrunners), and that where the feeling of entitlement comes in is that it stops one stopping and thinking about whether what one is asking for is right or wrong, because it’s just “naturally deserved”.

I think if you read through the recent thread on the morality of artificially “splitting” games for instance, I think the author is correct in that there is a strand of entitlement to particular things amongst a portion of the community and I get the impression that the author is also correct that some of these entitlements seem to have been learned from playing other games.

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I believe this is actually largely in line with the article’s point, except that the author is interrogating the often monolithic idea of what “doing very well” means. Reliably getting to 7AP is one metric of doing well, but the suggestion is that we might investigate and/or support others.

While likely true, this is a bit like saying “The VAST majority of music production IS AND IS GOING TO REMAIN CASUAL.” Sure, more people sing in the shower than on stage every day, but:
a) Shower singers don’t receive the visibility or infrastructural support of, say, T. Swift.
b) Shower singers are not treated as “real musicians.”
c) Music as an industry is not oriented toward nor terribly supportive of shower singers.

There are all sorts of reasons (the benefits of capital concentration not the least among them) that these things are the case and I’m not exactly pooh-poohing either the professionalization of music or the development of a competitive Netrunner scene. Again, what I think the article is asking of us is to consider other kinds of play and whether or not those modes of engagement should be valued (and rewarded) accordingly. I’m not (and I don’t think the article is, either) just talking about “jank” or “fun decks,” but we might also consider things like carrying oneself with a friendly demeanor, recruiting new players, unpaid labor on behalf of the community (maintaining websites, organizing events, etc.), cultural production (fan art, cosplay, w/e), etc. etc. etc. These things all offer different kinds of benefits to the community (including the competitive community), but they don’t receive a great deal of attention or support (and, as you suggest, when there is no support for x, people are less motivated to do x).

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If I am reading the argument of the article correctly, one of the main take-home points would be that the incorrect definition of “casual players” as players who do not care about winning matches primarily (or even at all) is unhelpful.

You can be a casual player, or an intense player.
You can be a competitive player, or you can be a non-competitive player.

The key is that those are two different and unrelated spectrums. (Lumping all other motives for playing the game other than “being the winningest” into one category maybe does somewhat privilege competitiveness as a motive, but lets run with it for the moment)

  • A casual, competitive player could be someone who likes the cut-and-thrust of super-tuned tournament play and on the odd occassion they decide they fancy some Netrunning, finds the nearest local tournament to attend and pit their wits against the other players.
  • An intense, competitive player could be someone who equally enjoys Netrunner mainly for the competitive element and has a lot of good friends they’ve met met through repeated competitive play, making sure they never miss a single tournament and perhaps even travelling to other countries to do so!
  • A casual, non-competitive player could be someone who plays primarily to express their creativity through deckbuilding, and turns up to their local group once a month or so to try and see how their latest Professor iteration goes.
  • An intense, non-competitive Netrunner player could be someone who isn’t fussed about proving themselves through competition but is the hub of the local Netrunner community as they always make an effort to organise and run all of the local tournaments, because that way rather than having to play competitive games themself they get to shoot the breeze instead and try and palm off their latest Netrunner fan fiction and homebrewed alternate artworks on their mates!

Using the word “casual” synonymously with “non-competitive” can perhaps tend to suggest that if you aren’t interested in winning competitions you’re not invested in the game, and that is I think the main myth that the article intends to dispel. To put it another way, if you’re mainly invested in the game in order to get your weird deck to work in a drunken atmosphere, playing that competitive tournament in a place that doesn’t even have a bar(!) is merely a “casual” practice for the Friday night pub Netrunner meet-up when you really get to let rip and test yourself!

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I’m not an expert on the subject, but to me “privilege” is mostly a social thing that influences your everyday life to an enormous degree. White people have “privilege” over black people, heterosexual people over homosexual people etc. To apply such a term to Netrunner just seems to go against the whole point of the term itself. If I go into a McDonald’s, do I have more “privilege” than a vegetarian, just because I eat meat? I mean…maybe? It just feels weird to apply the term to a situation where my choice (to eat meat or to play Netrunner non-spikey) is more important than the “privileges” I was born/raised with.

Edit: For some reason the forum thinks I’m quoting SneakySly, it’s a reply to linuxmaier though.

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That particular usage of the word as far as I am aware stems from a particular strand of academic sociology. The use of it in general speech is very recent and and tends to be associated with a particular socio-political philosophy (even more so an insistence on it being the only possible usage).

If it doesn’t make any sense under the particular usage of the word you try to fit it to, its probably a good sign that the author didn’t intend to invite that usage at all! :wink:

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Netrunner is a social game, evidenced by this website, octgn, jinteki, worlds, leagues, etc.

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As I was reading the article, I wondered to myself “do competitive Netrunner players really act that privileged?” Then I read this comment thread…I smell a whole lot of privilege comin’ off this thread.

FYI: “But I’m not that way!” is not a defense against a claim of privilege.

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This sort of comment is also a great way to foreclose the possibility of meaningful conversation, so if it was your intent to help those in this thread you feel are acting in ignorance of their privileged status and thereby harming others, please articulate something that is constructive.

Otherwise, it’s just a new way to call people names on the playground: “You’re privileged!” “Nuh-anh, I’m totes not” “That’s the sort of thing privileged people would say!” etc.

Which is fine if that’s what you’d like to do!

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