“THERE ARE NO RULES IN STARCRAFT. UNLESS…

“There are no rules in Starcraft. Unless you hack the program with a 3rd party mod, there’s literally nothing you can do in-game that is “unfair” or “against the rules”. You can’t break the law because there are no laws to break; anything you do within the game is considered fair. You can cheese, but everyone understands that cheesing is part of the game and dealing with it correctly is part developing your skills. There are referees in tournament play and sometimes refs issue decisive rulings, but those rulings almost always have to do with instances where the game has broken down through no fault of the players, either by lag or a disconnect or some other technical problem. The only way to cheat at Starcraft is to hack the technical infrastructure; otherwise, it’s all fair game. So there are security issues to manage hacking, but the issue of ensuring a fair match between the players themselves has almost no refereeing overhead. Like chess, but unlike just about every other sport, the game of Starcraft allows opponents to engage in full out, no-holds-barred competition. And in some deeply meaningful way, for patrick and thousands of other gamers, this competition is fair. Cruel, perhaps, but ultimately just.”

#starcraft #attentioneconomy #playtowin

Starcraft 2 is brutally honest: Lessons for the Attention Economy

Starcraft 2 is brutally honest. You open it up, log on to Battle.net, click Find Match, and you’re almost instantly paired up with someone deemed to be within your skill level. Then you play, you …