Basically, anyone who’s anyone lives in America’s Breadbasket.
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I thought it was more of a cheese wedge.
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@thereisnosaurus Thanks for the response here. I found it helpful in clarifying some of the many points made in the article. On the topic of competitive games receiving only competitive support from the creators, I ran into a similar issue during my Street Fighter IV days, where the community was only helpful insofar as they viewed you as a competitive player. That game still gets a lot of players, but parallels Starcraft 2, in my opinion, in how the creators have marketed their games and built their communities. In some ways, I wasn’t really into the hugely competitive scene of SF4: there was a real testostero-aggro-smash vibe going on, and I couldn’t take it after I went to my second tournament. I still love the game, though don’t play it anymore (I have Netrunner!).
There are two issues that run parallel in your post, and in the article, that are difficult to reconcile together, and I hope you’ll clarify how you see their relationship. 1) FFG and support for its competitive scene while fostering a growing, thriving community (which includes all kinds of gamer players) and 2) the game mechanics and card designs at the core of the Netrunner, which foster min-maxing (as in your example) and feel-bad “play-the-best-stuff” ideology of competitive gaming.
Privilege, then, is the outcome of both of these social events running their course, and is certainly something we should be wary of in our community. Thus, you point that community involvement could potentially become a way of leveraging privilege, though it should not be. You are very right to point this out (I agreed with you way up there, somewhere in the fog). However, your following point is what is, in my view, problematic. You state that,
The problem, as I see it, is that you have previously implied, without actually stating it (or perhaps want it not to be true), that the shell of the game is actually causing this problem, and is at the root of your anecdote of the Nationals winner.
You go on to state that this is a product of how the community has shaped winning and privilege, but you ignore that it is a fundamental characteristic of this game - that is, deckbuilding. It is indeed the game’s failing, as you claim:
So, your perspective on a game’s function is well taken, and as a Netrunner player and part of this community, it is very prescient; but as I am also a student of cultural studies, and ABD in literature, I don’t agree that the game’s shell encourages diversity and critiques the power that it represents in its cards and world-building. It, in point of fact, promotes it. And that might be its greatest failure.
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I think moreso than other card games, netrunner’s game rules do promote diversity. The game is complex enough that playskill/practice in certain matchups makes a big difference. That means you can’t necessarily skate by on autopilot against an unfamiliar deck, which gives the outsider a small competitive advantage that they might not have in magic, where they might just get overrun by a red deck or something. Also, the fact that hidden information is a big part of the game means that if you’re doing something different, you can punish your opponent by catching them by surprise.
It’s really the lack of balance in the design of the cards that makes jamming astrobiotics a reasonable choice in any tournament. They could be doing a lot better job with that by being more open to errata or bannings, but I think the first big test is going to be rotation and the potential rerelease of the core set.
All that being said, in any game where you build decks, building a strong rogue deck is difficult enough that the vast majority of players aren’t going to be capable of building and playing one that can stand up in a competitive environment. There’s not much you can really do about this from a designer’s perspective aside from adding more variance to the game, which is a double-edged sword, (and I see the relative lack of variance in Netrunner as one of its main strengths). The fact that a swiss tournament is going to pair like-record players together is about as good as you can do in terms of making sure these players get to play games where they have a legitimate shot of winning against a stranger at an event, assuming winning sometimes matters to them.
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What decks are you bringing to worlds, again? 
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I really hope he brings astrbiotics with 2 junebugs.
@CJFM It would be a pleasure!
Ok, for starters I think we’re using shell differently. I’m used to that meaning the aesthetic and cultural themes of the game- eg: Netrunner is a game with a cyberpunk aesthetic where you take the role of a hacker or a corporation in a dystopian future, with X, Y and Z further themes etc. I suspect you’re using it to mean the basic mechanical structure of the game? If so, I kind of agree with you. Netrunner, mechanically is the kind of complex puzzle system that ultimately concentrates success in those who invest early and maintain their advantages. Classic Garfield.
On the other hand, the whole cyberpunk genre is founded on themes of cultural resistance to hegemony and freedom of thought. Netrunner has a culturally and demographically diverse cast of characters and subthemes of caste, oligarchy, resource exploitation, cultural resistance and information freedom etc. Not only does it strike the traditional notes of cyberpunk, but it also brings in previously marginalized voices- women, non westerners, etc. This has been a deliberate choice by the designers, not just aesthetically but an active attempt to entwine those aesthetics deeply into the mechanics of the game.
Unfortunately, not so deeply that the underlying mechanical system doesn’t shine through when placed in the hands of a community of experienced puzzle-crackers such as we have here ;).
This all said, I do hold the competitive mindset partly responsible for this. Remember, as a player you have a choice how you approach the game. You could choose to focus on immersing yourself in the theme and making non-optimal choices mechanically that fit the personality or goals of your identity of choice. It’s not so much that Netrunner (and most other complex-system based games) fosters or courts the mechanically-centred, puzzle-solving competitive mindset, it’s that it doesn’t actively resist it. It is open to a player purely focusing on the mechanical game and welcomes that alongside all the other possibilities. Thanks in part to privilege and in part to the effects of mechanical optimization over time in a community, that perspective is likely to become the default. It goes without saying that that default is possibly the most inaccessible way of approaching the game for a new player who isn’t already a veteran of the wider sphere of competitive games, which means it’s not a great default to have if your goal is growth and diversity.
My anecdote about the tournament winner was more to illustrate that even self-identified competitive players often have other motivations that end up being sacrificed as the focus of the game’s community narrows into valuing success in competition as the primary goal. This also partly links back into my comments about Netdecking being the norm devaluing other aspects of the game. Net-decking is in my mind something like the tragedy of the commons- If only a few people do it, it’s fine, but their actions place so much pressure on other people to copy them that it ends up creating a bad situation for everyone- I.E: an environment that is hostile to diversity of playstyle and strongly disincentivizes creativity below a certain threshold
As @mediohxcore noted, in a net-deck heavy meta, the commitment required to play ‘rogue’ is extremely high. I also want to agree with him that there’s elements of the card design that make playing standard goodstuff far too attractive to foster a diverse competitive meta, but there’s a real tension there. Simple, powerful, consistent effects are really needed in a game like Netrunner to give people new to complex card games a place to start. On the other hand they heavily bias strategy towards the non-interactive self-optimizing kind of goodstuff decks that we see dominate the meta consistently. Do you make the game more inaccessible for new folks in order to create more variety at the top? These are the great questions of game design…
If I were to throw an off the cuff suggestion on changing the card pool, the first thing I’d do would be outright remove any ID ability that is 1) consistent (places few constraints on deckbuilding), 2) non interactive (opponent has very few ways of disrupting the ability) and 3) core-economic (generates or taxes cards, clicks, credits). So, for example, ETF, BABW, RP, Near Earth Hub, Kate and Andy (probably a few more as well). I’d be very curious to see what that would do to a meta over time. My general feeling though is to try to find ideas that do not actually alter the core game.
More later, gotta go
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In terms of mechanics and theme, I think there’s a pretty clear message that comes out (and I don’t think is intended). It’s that in this corporate oligarchy basically the only means of restistance is individual struggle of runners (who may or may not have the helP of connections) and that mass action is basically nonexistent (employee strike, human first) and useless. Basically it’s an internalized neoliberal that represents there is no alternative to the politics of individuals (TINA and all that). That’s why it’s a dystopia, because there is no political alternative to the corporate regime, it’s the ultimate death of politics. Everything else is fluff to me outside of the core message of a basically futile struggle of an individual against a corporate oligarchy.
Anyways, it’s possible to be interested on netrunner on man levels, or only one. And just as you’re accusing competitive players of focusing on one outlook as the correct one (which some do) you seem to be guilty of prescribing a way to play that you feel is correct.
There are many ways to play netrunner, and there is room for all the ways. It is important to talk about making sure there is room for all these ways, and that certain ways don’t dominate in a way to preclude others.
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I don’t know if you saw it, but upthread I said that looking at this as a zero-sum, at-fault kind of thing is counterproductive at best, because it’s not anyone’s fault that they think playing against PPVP and Noise is kind of boring. It also seems clear that neither is anyone at fault to think that a mechanically-centered competitive focus is the most fun way to enjoy the game. I think “you could choose to focus on playing according to theme instead of playing mechanically optimally” sounds uncomfortably close to saying “it’s your fault that you play to win.” It’s counterproductive to this entire discussion. People like what they like, and players who build a deck entirely based around a theme are no more wrong to enjoy that than players who netdeck PPVP Kate to win as many games as they can. Or, put another way, it’s just as unreasonable to turn to a less-competitive player and say “you could choose to play competitively and put in the time and practice necessary to win” as it is to tell people they could choose to play less competitively.
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In terms of the predominant mode of organised Netrunning, tournaments, what does anyone think of “the cut”? I appreciate that the way tournaments are organised is probably the inheritor of a long history of card-gaming tournaments with established conventions, but I have to say it struck me as a little “off” when I first attended a Netrunner tournament (This was only a five-man tournament in the local game shop basement mind, so the “cut” was the top two from the Swiss matchups playing for the top spot!).
Organising tournaments with a “cut” followed by knockout Netrunner (either single- or double-elimination) absolutely adds something in terms of both a suitable method of finding the best players and excitement/interest as a different type of game. I don’t see any issue with that, it’s a benefit.
The thing that seems a little “off” and wonder if it could be improved is that such organisation of tournaments has a secondary, unintended consequence which is that those who don’t make the cut get to play less Netrunner.
In some cases, it can get to the stage where the eventual winner gets to play nearly twice as many games of Netrunner as someone who just got to play in the Swiss part of the tournament. Does anyone else see that as an issue? Maybe you might say that if everyone played for as long as the winner that would make tournaments too long and no-one would want to play them. But why do we expect the winner to play for so long in that case? The idea that the “worse” players somehow ought to be happier playing less Netunner than “better” players only seems to make sense if you think that:
- “better” players enjoy playing Netrunner more so they’ll want to play for longer;
- or “worse” players prefer hanging around watching their Netrunner “betters” play Netrunner rather than playing Netrunner themselves.
Either of those seems somewhat problematic to me: I would have thought that anyone who turns up to a Netrunner event wants to play Netrunner! And please note I’m not suggesting that anyone deliberately sets up a knockout tournament merely to bask in the adoration of their game-less “lesser” compatriots while they play the top tables! We’re talking about the unintentional implications of well-meaning actions here.
On a practical level, is there a way to reduce the pool to smaller, knockout rounds without arbitrarily stopping everyone else’s fun at the same moment?
Maybe you could you break the players into “cells” for the knockout rounds, so that if you have a “cut” of 16, then 17-32 play a separate knockout tournament for a silver trophy, 33-48 play for a bronze cup and so on? That way everyone would get to experience knockout Netrunner and the amount of engagement in the tournament wouldn’t feel quite so elitist (for want of a better word).
If that seems too complicated, maybe there is a way of continuing the tournament in the Swiss format for everyone else?
I appreciate that for the Organised Play at least the official format is laid out by FFG, but that doesn’t preclude anyone organising additional Netrunner for those who don’t make the cut, outside of the official tournament remit, does it? I’m not a tournament format geek, but I’m sure there must be some existing solutions out there that could be easily implemented if it was desired.
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This is why we’ve begun to run tournaments as “Swiss +1” (one extra Swiss round than the number of participants would normally indicate). We’ve found that there’s usually a clear 1st place after all the rounds are over, and this way everybody gets to play more Netrunner. It definitely lacks the excitement and tension of the top cut, but we feel OK reserving that for Store Championships and above.
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Apologies for misusing the term shell. I was using it in terms of game mechanics/card pool, so I think we are saying the same things here. I didn’t mean to say that the cyberpunk themes were not promoting diversity, but exactly as you and @mediohxcore note, that the game card pool and mechanics are not in-sync with that thematic diversity in a way, as it promotes competitive min-maxing and discourages brews. That’s what I meant.
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The other day I heard someone, in the same play session 1) Complain about netdecking 2) Complain that his decks always lost to NEH. And I mean, sure, maybe you like to play more casually but if you do you really have no rights to complain when you lose games because your decks are a bit crap.
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No need to apologize! You weren’t misusing the term, shell is used for a bunch of things! I have boardgame design to the brain right now so I used that one, but really the main use in competitive card games is something like ‘the efficient breakers shell’ referring to a specific set of cards that work together. So really, here I mis-used it
@popeye09: Good thoughts about the cut, it’s a good example of competitive privilege in terms of structurally being awarded more value for your investment if you follow that mindset. I quite like the idea of cutting to several brackets if your event is a slightly more casual event but aimed at a field of very competitively minded players. For a marquee event you might run into trouble with potential exploitation. Really just running extra Swiss rounds and having a flat prizing structure that incentivises people to keep playing is probably the easiest way of adding value for the <50% players in the tournament.
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I don’t think those two statements from the same person are unreasonable. Many/most (NEH) decks are netdecks. His/her decks may be more competitive vs other less well tuned decks (most decks are). Also, NBN is typically the most punishing of homebrews, because they have a habit of winning really fast in a way you feel you couldn’t have done anything about. There are other ways to proceed other than resorting to netdecking. If you sit down with another player who has more experience and try to understand why your deck doesn’t perform well vs NBN, that could be useful.
I don’t agree with the ‘there should be no netdecks’ crowd. Not least, because it’s just unrealistic. But I do understand where they’re coming from. Both from the wanting to explore all the card pool perspective, and the ‘I want to create something of my own to play with’ perspective. Card synergy is more interesting to me than pure card efficiency. It looks and feels cooler when it goes off.
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I think there may also be an additional possible motivation behind a “netdeckophobe” philosophy, which doesn’t inherently jar with the idea of wanting to try and build a good deck: the desire to play your opponent.
It’s perfectly valid in the way Netrunner is designed to see the deckbuilding as part of the game itself. In that sense it might be seen that playing someone with a “netdeck” is a bit like playing pub football against a team that bring Wayne Rooney on for the second half. It’s not that Wayne Rooney isn’t a good player (at least by pub team standards, I’m not his biggest fan but even I must admit that much ;)) and that it wouldn’t be awesome to play against him, but rather that the King’s Head really wanted to see if they could beat their bitter rivals the Hare and Hounds and they don’t feel like they really got a chance to find out. If every pub team in the league started crowbarring Rooney in up front, then while the standard of football would undoubtedly be raised, it might seem like something else had been lost.
In that sense it might possibly be a more positive philosophy than a negative one, not that your opponent might want to avoid playing a “netdeck” per se but they might actively desire pitching their wits against yours and the presence of a netdeck might make them feel like that isn’t possible. (I suppose the way to distinguish that is to ask if you were the creator of the “netdeck” would they still be averse to playing against it!)
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Something I’ve been thinking about is that the most oppressive and unfair-feeling decks in a casual setting (at least on the runner side) are actually NOT tier 1 netdecks. They are things like this:
http://netrunner.meteor.com/decks/8g75x6FoYDxg7LXao
Any excellent player will tell you that this type of deck is not a good choice for a big tournament, but it will absolutely slaughter anything you brew up at your kitchen table.
Tier 1 decks are important because they keep the really ABUSIVE BUT CORNER-CUTTING decks in check. Local metas need enough people playing Astroscript and Caprice decks to keep deck-builders honest.
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This a million times. I think this is a major part of why weird stuff like DLR, Haley million-install decks, etc. are considered strong after online testing/GNK wins. If you don’t play against enough actual proven lists then yeah, anything can seem strong.
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I agree, though Tier 1 decks, like NEH Fastro or Turtlebacks specifically, force some IDs into corner-cutting. IDs without quick answers to fast advance have to result to down and dirty methods, and is actually why I think we see decks like that MaxX (or even Reina or Whizzard) siphon spam roll around every once in a while. So they’re important, but still problematic.
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