A dear friend of mine
Newton’s third law is a scientific favorite: “To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.” This law is also the core of competitive gameplay. If I make a move, my opponent must respond in order to neutralize the value of my move. The victor is then the player that takes a step beyond the law and causes a force greater than the potential reaction of the opponent. This is a step towards excellence, a concept that is beyond Bill and Ted and their excellent adventures. Excellence, here, is a term I will use to explain the movement beyond the expected, to excel in a field and create a noticeable division between yourself and the baseline. Overcoming an opponent’s equal and opposite reaction by performing more efficient reactions of your own generates excellence.
In a perfect competitive videogame, all playable options are entirely balanced with their own unique flavors. This is technically impossible, but let’s stick with the notion of ideal balance for now. Let’s say this game is something akin to Starcraft or Total War, where you have a selection of armies to take into battle. In this balanced game, if both players met continually with total equality, nothing would happen. What determines the outcome is the individual excellence of the player, and in games such as Starcraft and Total War, that excellence is most often generated through reaction timing. In these games, my job as a player is to evaluate my opponent, their strategy, and the best possible maneuver to shut down the enemy’s strategy. The goal is then to analyze my opponent’s action, formulate a reaction, then formulate possible reactions that they might make to my reaction, and then formulate a reaction to the new action. The deciding factor is the speed at which one player can evaluate and respond to all potential actions, plus battlefield decisions (which I have not yet spoken of).In Starcraft, the value of scouting is high. Read the enemy strategy, respond, then begin responding to the expected opponent response to your response. This process repeats itself dozens of times to varying degrees, but the saying “stay one step ahead of the game” is very true here. Just like in Chess and Risk, you must analyze your opponent and all possible moves to increase your chances of victory.
Beyond the analytical is the kinetic. In a skirmish, players can generally control their units to try and maximize their efficiency. The player with better micromanagement skills will hands-down defeat an opponent with poorer micromanagement skills in an even-army match-up. This is the kinetic form of reaction timing: taking your units and making real-time decisions within a fraction of a second. In the middle of a game of Starcraft, a player typically is faced with, within 10 seconds, producing a back-up or a response army, develop a new strategy towards facing the enemy force, analyze the current map and enemy-controlled regions, and successfully winning a skirmish. Again, these things all happen within seconds, all of which can determine whether or not the game ends up in a W or an L on your record.
This is the nature of excellence in competitive gaming: the rate and efficiency at which a player responds through individual reaction timing. This is directly proportional to what we consider to be “player skill”; the more “skilled” we consider a player, the faster and more efficient their reaction timing is.
Also, this isn’t limited to Starcraft or any war-based games by any means. All games are dependent upon reaction timing, even old-school Mario games.
– M.B