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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   2326 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 9, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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My partner runs circles around me in Mario Kart, and probably has spent more time playing games in the last couple years than I have. She's sunk in probably >20x the time I have in BG3, last I checked, and is enough of a gamer that she started talking mad shit about my brother's unoptimised strats while he and I were playing co-op (note: my first run, 0 familiarity with any mechanics) despite him having completed a couple runs already -- though he's more of a Timmy while she's more of a Spike.

She also used to beat me in WC3 more than 50% of the time when that was relevant. (I did kind of self gimp myself by being interested in relatively high execution strategies that I couldn't perform, and she would just huntress rush me to death)

She is quite competitive and plays to win, though, so now she doesn't play competitive games because she doesn't feel like she could compete at a satisfactory level anymore without putting in enough effort that it would derail other commitments. I can't really disagree -- I've stopped for largely the same reason (though I loosely still play a bit of MTG).

n=1, but they do exist.

First time hearing about the Timmy-Johnny-Spike classification. I'm not super familiar with MTG, but I don't really get the distinction between Timmy and Johnny, since it sounds like both prefer flashy plays to purely optimizing for the highest win probability. Is Timmy optimizing for largest point differential over win probability (e.g., rather win by 10 with 51% probability than win by 1 with 55% probability) while Johnny wants to play unorthodox or off-meta sets?

Timmy: all fluff, love of the setting. This dragon cards is cool because it's a big dragon that breathes lightning. They are fantasizing about the setting of the game, not the game itself, and as a consequence are usually not very good at the game itself. They want to daydream.

Johnny: Balance of fluff and crunch, and love of the game. This dragon is cool because it enables an infinite loop using these three other cards. They are fantasizing about the game, about the mechanics and their interactions. They want to play.

Spike: All Crunch, with the goal of winning at any cost. This dragon is cool because it gives me an extra win every ten games. They are fantasizing about winning, the crunch is interesting to them only as it helps increase their win percentage, and the fluff is irrelevant. They want to win.

The distinction I've seen more often was more like:

Timmy: this card is cool because it's a big, often expensive, flashy effect (7/7 angel)

Johnny: this card is cool because it can synergize with 5 other cards in an obscure way (that one wizard with "if you would lose from having no cards to draw, you win")

Spike: this card is cool because it's a plus tempo drop that raises my win percentage (that one meta 3/3 flying vehicle thopter)

The appreciation for fluff was offloaded to one of the secondary classifications (Vorthos? Or was that the one who cared about card artwork?)

I tend to think of it this way -- a Timmy is drawn to cool stuff represented by the playing of the game (whether it be through roleplaying, through big fat numbers, the social aspect of the game, etc.), while a Johnny is drawn to cool interactions created by the game mechanics, up to and including bizarre 5 card combos relying on arcane rules minutiae that doesn't work out 9/10 of the time but that one time it works it looks really impressive...

A Timmy would be happy winning conventionally but in a "cool" way (think more "would look cool on a movie screen" rather than "would impress other players"), while a Johnny is more interested in doing unconventional stuff.

On the other hand Spikes just want to win at all costs within the rules of the game -- and if the most effective deck is utterly braindead and uninteresting otherwise, so be it.

In an RPG you could maybe translate it thus:

  • Timmies would try to spec their character to feel the most badass
  • Johnnies would be more interested in weird builds or challenge runs
  • Spikes would minmax the shit out of the game (though TBH I think in a solo context even Spike-y people tend to loosen up a bit)

Kind of. As I understand it, Timmy is more about "dumb" big flashy stuff, Johnny more about "brainy" subtle off-meta strategies. Similar to Spikes, Johnnies still play for a challenge, but the challenge is about making some weird game mechanic work, not straightforward winning. In my experience, Timmy is the most derogatory term in practice, basically saying someone plays like a five year old or at best "just for fun" with no effort whatsoever, Spike is in the middle, sometimes used negatively for tryhards, sometimes positively for straightforward good playing, and Johnny is the most positively connotated, the kind of person who doesn't "netdeck" but still wins often enough due to their good deck building & playing.

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