'09ers…amirite?
i’ll tell you a story. gather around, children. i’ll spoiler tag it for brevity.
Spoiler
he made this poker variant in board game form called “pandante”, which is actually a pretty fun little game. being a studier of poker games and enjoyer of game theory, i programmed a web version of this game so i could play against my other poker buddies online and see how good it was or wasn’t. i know a thing or two about game theory and poker, as do my friends, so i figure we could either break it or find a lot of fun depth in it. i learned python just for this and spent about a month doing it (i don’t regret doing this; i learned a lot of stuff and ended up with a cool project which i actually still use with my friends). but i thought i would show it to sirlin and his group on his forums.
i first mentioned on sirlin’s forums that i was making it, but i got no response (i figured there would be SOME interest to play this as-of-then unreleased game online). later i asked him some rules clarification questions, because his rulebook is not, in my opinion, particularly well written. i got LAMBASTED by him, both on his forums and on his IRC channel, for not reading the rules carefully enough. he was really insulting to me. (the rules book was later edited to include clarifications on my questions, but he never told me this until i read it myself later and laughed). anyway, i made some assumptions about the rules and programmed the rest of the game.
upon playing it with my friends, we did indeed find a pretty clever little game, but one that had some… unique flaws. for instance, we thought we found some pretty strong “auto-plays” that required no thought and forced bad decisions out of certain players, especially in games with fewer numbers of players. we also had some thoughts that certain rules probably needed to be changed in order to further punctuate his design goals; he wanted the game to be a lot about bluffing, but we felt that the game was actually LESS about bluffing because of certain rules that could be easily tweaked. remember, we found all this out because my online implementation was very fast to play and easy to adjust the rules. we played for about 2 hours one night, tinkering with the program’s rules and replaying games on the fly, and probably played 50x as many hands of poker as sirlin ever could using the physical copy of his game.
i tried showing my findings to sirlin. i was very nice about it, being very politically correct and deferring to his masterful genius at every possible turn (“i noticed you made this design decision… that’s interesting. could you maybe elaborate on how this decision came to be? had you considered choosing X rule over that?”). he turned me into a laughing stock in front of his IRC channel. he belittled me by calling me grade school names, saying “you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about”, and a ton of other really surprising stuff (this guy is an adult? i wondered).
then, someone else in the forum made their own online implementation of pandante, separate from mine (i actually talked to this dude once i realized what he was doing; he was cool to me so i don’t have any grudge towards him). but because he was part of sirlin’s cult of personality, everyone LAPPED it up. i personally think my implementation was cleaner and faster (his was a little swamped with some overhead that made following and playing the game time consuming), but they played so many games on this thing. that’s okay, though… i’m just glad people were trying it out. after a day or so, people were marveling at how much strategy was in the game and further laughed at me for the suggestions i made. “this loser has no idea how to play”, etc etc.
fast forward a month later. the final version of the rulebook is finalized and the game is sent out to print. i suppose through further testing they realized all the points i had made, because every single rule i had suggested be altered was changed (not always to my suggestion, but usually pretty close). these were things i found out because i cared enough about his game to spend time making an online implementation and gave him this immensely powerful tool FOR FREE to play around with, and instead of listening to me because i dared to question his magnificence, even politely, he and his court jesters laughed me out. but as it turns out, every single thing i said was true about his game.
i also followed the original print run of “yomi”, a card game that simulates street fighter matches in neat ways. again, a very cool game… i own a physical copy of it. as i watched him trying to launch the game and get board game outlets to cover/review it, i watched him turn customer after customer away with his extremely arrogant replies to questions regarding pricing models or comparisons to other games that he thought were beneath him. it was such a big deal that some review outlets even said “i recommend buying this game even though sirlin is a bit of a jerk”. i really wish i could play this game because it’s actually pretty neato and i do own a copy of it, but i can’t un-see sirlin’s face on it now. it was his first foray into trying to sell a printed board game, and he basically went into to the board game world and told everyone exactly how things should be run around here you cretins, and expected everyone to bow down in reverence because his game was pretty good, rather than be incredibly insulted and not want anything to do with him.
you can ask greg how his attitude ruined SF2: HD Remix.
Also to all you chess scrubs out there - Step up to David Sirlin’s CHESS 2!
Proceed.
Sirlin was also responsible for rebalancing Puzzle Fighter. I’m only a casual player but I think the community overall considered it an improvement over the original (?)
Wow that sucks Ricky.
I also believe sirloin was responsible for bringing us the first arcade perfect port of ST, on one of the Capcom collections… until we all learned that it had inherent input lag you couldn’t get rid of.
He also was lauded as a masterful balancing GOD and stuff for months when making HDR, and then the demo came out with 2 characters and it turned out that one of them had a one-move infinite combo… Dragon punch xN
That delicious irony.
EDIT: Fixed autocorrect from my phone… didn’t fix sirloin.
Thats crazy ricky, yeesh. Guy sounds like a mega douche
Very odd how somebody with that mentality gets to where they are lol
Have any of you played through FF2j, and actually liked the leveling system? I don’t mind the stats and weapon skills being affected by this but god damn having to cast a spell 100+ times to level it to the next level is really tedious lol
say what you will about sirlin, his play to win articles are in general a really good set of principles to apply to any kind of competitive environment
aka abuse what you can until people stop it, use cheap shit, don’t handicap yourself if you’re trying to win, etc etc etc
a lot of it is sanctimonious douchebaggery but there is some great stuff in there
that’s just it, he has some interesting things to tell people, and often has some good ideas about balance (like puzzle fighter as byron said)
it’s just hard to get at that stuff when he’s being himself
his hate for sf4 (and KI, actually, despite having never played it) is pretty well known but he won’t entertain anyone who thinks the game is even remotely playable, he’ll just violently dismiss you
anyway i didn’t tell that story to earn pity points or whatever, that was about a year ago and it doesn’t really matter. i just mentioned it because josh wanted to know who sirlin was, and since i had a few personal run-ins with him, i got to see the “real” him besides the playing to win book everyone always links
sirlin is also well known for a particular alpha 2 tournament in the 90s where he picked rose and pressed cr.strong over and over and some people had a hard time dealing with it. but what a lesson he taught some scrubs about playing to win!! they’ve all now ascended to godhood, enlightened in ways we can only dream of
Good lord this world is all sorts of fucked up.
I’m reading/watching this http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/07/europe/france-satire-magazine-gunfire/index.html
tl;dr
French satire magazine has multiple shooters with AK-47s invade their building and open fire leaving ~12+ dead including the cartoonists, journalists and cops.
Possibly what provoked it?
News outlets are censoring his cartoons now too.
welp, i haven’t got the phone call nor a plane ticket back to work yet.
if you CCG dudes need any help setting up, getting xboxes ready, transporting gear, running brackets, getting coffee, airport pickups, whatever…
i’m freelance. ex CCG elite reporting for duty, sir.
This just doesn’t make any sense to me :(.
For anyone curious, the cartoon says:
“Still no attempts (shootings/terrorist acts) in France”
The guy below (who I can only assume is Al-Baghdadi) says: Wait! We have until the end of January to present His wishes.
Oddly prophetic I guess.
Are you a bad enough dude to get irresponsibly blackout drunk with us? Can you handle the daytime drinks?
sniff Come back to us Derryk senpai ~
yes. the answer is yes.
sick dir en grey song from the new album
Shaw is cutting their speeds in half and charging the same: http://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/2ri6ma/as_promised_shaw_lowered_their_speeds_by_60_for/
you might like my buddy’s band’s single they released a few days ago
Shaw is such garbage, Canadian internet is already awful and yet they keep doing stupid shit like that