It'd definitely help people wanting to write articles analyzing starcraft. There's definitely things the author doesn't get, that'd seem obvious if he'd read this stuff.

Anyway, I think most people study pure game theory, not because its directly applicable; they study it because there are some surprising results from it, that inform their strategic thinking - not because they apply it to evaluate their specific strategic situation.

>The point he's trying to make is that truly great (in his view: competitive) games are those that the most advanced AI algorithms won't have any real competitive edge, so that game "theory" would back-up game "reality" of winning with a marginal advantage is more advantageous than winning "big".

I'm not sure that's the point he's making. But anyway, I'm not sure its a valid point. For example, Chess is a game where the most advanced AI algorithms have a huge competitive edge, surely its a truely great, competitive, game?

It is desirable property in a game, that there is no obvious strongly dominant pure strategy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_dominance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_(game_theory)#Pure_and...

"winning with a marginal advantage is more advantageous than winning "big"" doesn't at all follow from: "those that the most advanced AI algorithms won't have any real competitive edge".

> It is desirable property in a game, that there is no obvious strongly dominant pure strategy.

Unless it's a game of skill. E.g. you win a race by running faster than other people. That can still be fun.

Yes, sure, fair point. I was talking about strategy games as such - but you are right that there's large elements of execution skill in many games, even in an RTS like starcraft, which is also fun to compete on.

Yes. Though even games that have dominant pure strategies in theory, like chess or go can be fun to compete in. Because humans don't have access to the optimal strategies, execution skill and gambling creep in.

(Gambling in the sense: You can create more or less complicated situations. There's more or less apparent entropy in the game you are playing then.)