The Skill Gamers

[Erik_Twice]

Danmaku and the like aren't necessarily games that require more skill/skills to play. They just require lots of memorization and familiarity in addition to player reflex and assessment skills.

It seems unfair to list a list of skills and then add "just" to it as if they didn't count. They require skill, they are games defined by it, they are skill-based games.

And, really, I don't agree at all with the memorization claim if simply because only shmups seem to get it and not, say, Megaman 2 or Castlevania.

Any game where you and your opponent rely on the same basic set of in-game skills and game mechanic knowledge is, IMO, more skill-based than any other kind of game.

There are plenty of competitive games that are absolutely trivial.

[isiolia]

It seems unfair to list a list of skills and then add "just" to it as if they didn't count. They require skill, they are games defined by it, they are skill-based games.

And, really, I don't agree at all with the memorization claim if simply because only shmups seem to get it and not, say, Megaman 2 or Castlevania.

Maybe it's just that other factors at play need to be distinguished? Usually, skill is considered in concert with other elements. Gamasutra had a short piece on this the other day, though he lumps all ways to be good at a game under "skill". I've otherwise tended to see knowledge/strategy and practiced ability set apart.

Pretty much any game benefits from knowing it backwards and forwards. Some might demand it more than others, but it's universally useful to some degree. Plenty of games simply don't benefit from honed reflexes, timing, muscle memory, that kind of thing. To me, that's where the distinction tends to come in - and it fits fairly well with the types of games that you set forwards in the first post.

[marurun]

Danmaku and the like aren't necessarily games that require more skill/skills to play. They just require lots of memorization and familiarity in addition to player reflex and assessment skills.

It seems unfair to list a list of skills and then add "just" to it as if they didn't count. They require skill, they are games defined by it, they are skill-based games.

My central point, and I'm being stubborn and a bit inflammatory for a reason, here, is that this particular thread seems to be focused on particular types of skills. Skill games actually represent a broad enough spectrum of games that I think it could represent upwards of 50% of the non-mobile games market if liberally interpreted. On the other side, I think many of the titles people think of as skill games don't actually require any more skill than other games they don't think of as skill games, and that perceptual bias is sometimes at play. And when trying to more narrowly define skill games, people often simply go to certain genres, or stick to harder games, or add other little caveats and conditions that don't leave the resulting list any more dependent upon skill necessarily than excluded titles.