Konrad Curze said:
Yeah, some douchebag wrote a article about how the only correct way to play is to play to win using whatever tactics work.
Personally I think the point of playing is to have fun thus at every LAN party I have ever gone to there were set gentlemans rules of conduct. Those who violated the mutually agreed upon rules were simply never invited back.
However Starcraft is kind of a horrible game. The only way Zerg players can win is by the opening minutes spam. The longer a fight goes on the easier it gets for Terran and Protoss.
Was it David Sirlin [http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-1.html]? That must be the most misinterpreted article of all time. The point is that looking down on players who try to win (within the rules, that is) is unproductive.
In your own personal games with friends, construct whatever ruleset you like. Ain't nothing wrong with that way of playing; the point is just that when you lose a game without your house rules, a scrub will complain that the opponent was 'cheap' or whatever, whereas a non-scrub will try to get better. If you read the article, you'll notice that he doesn't pass judgement on a person who chooses to limit the rules; he just notes that that attitude is unsuited to a competitive environment. And however
you wish the game was played, when you play a game online, unless you've specified your house rules beforehand, you're in a competitive environment.
So your 'gentlemen's rules of conduct' are fine. I hope, though, that they're clearly worded. 'No attacking for five minutes' in Starcraft is fine as a house rule. 'No spawn camping' in TF2 is a rule I really dislike. It's not clear what 'spawn camping' is (it can't actually be done), so players are left with no idea exactly what this secret rule might be; only the admin gets to decide whether the rule is being broken. Nobody has any way of figuring out what another person considers 'dishonourable', which is why, playing against strangers, a person will use all the possibilities the game makes available. That's the common ground; that's the ruleset you're both using. When presented with a working game, it's not unreasonable to assume that one's opponents are playing within the same boundaries unless otherwise stated, in which case neither player is being a dick unless they break the
actual rules. You can play with secret rules and decry anyone who doesn't abide by them, but the reasoning behind that standpoint is defective.
Besides, people find it fun to compete. I don't doubt that, in games where they go completely unchallenged, they don't find it any more satisfying than their victims. To find that the opponent played a boring game and lost, only because they didn't
want to put up any resistance, because their secret rules didn't require them to, is disheartening in any game.