What is Yomi?
What is Yomi?
What is Yomi?
There are many reasons why people play games. One of the most engaging reasons that some play is to compete against other players. There is a visceral thrill to competing; outmaneuvering; outthinking; and eventually winning against other competitive players.
Often this comes from learning how to tactically react against opponents. This can evolve and grow into how to strategize and respond against the strategies of other players. Perhaps one of the most beguiling aspects to tactics and strategy is prediction of opponents moves and how to respond to them. This predictive ability is called Yomi and will be discussed in this article.
This article will first define what Yomi is as well as how it influences and affects the prediction of actions of opponents and other players. The minds, motivations, and strategies of other players will be discussed as well as how it influences Yomi. Yomi in relation to strategy and how it affects expert players will be covered as well as how all players can examine and study their own actions for their own player development.
Finally this article will close on the relationship of Yomi to learning; and how an appreciation of connected empathy in games helps players appreciate, anticipate, and react to other players’ moves.
Yomi Defined
The term “Yomi” is a Japanese one that stems from the phrase “knowing the mind of the opponent.” It is something that closely related to fighting games and other orthogames where a competitive one-versus-one zero-sum nature of game play is apparent. This means that Yomi also extends to games including high conflict such as war games and battle simulations.
Yomi as a concept is deeply rooted in tactics and strategy as it includes the ability to accurately read and predict the motivations, moves, and a actions of opponents and how to respond accordingly. In short, Yomi is about “knowing what your opponent is going to do.”
Yomi and Prediction
One of the central elements of Yomi is knowing and being able to predict the next moves and actions that an opponent my take. But Yomi overall is more than just trying to predict your opponent’s next move. Rather, at its deepest level, with Yomi you also think about the different types, variety, and timing of counters that your opponent can and would use against you. Knowing what these “counterattacks” are and what and how to defend against themes is what takes Yomi to the next level.
Part of knowing, predicting, and planning against these countermeasures by your opponent requires multiple stages of planning. One of which is examining the game state and determining what the next best move is for your opponent. However, an aspect to keep in mind is determining what your opponent is thinking and how their own behaviors, preferences, and patterns affect and influence their decision making capacities.
Yomi is perhaps best represented in one-versus-one sports such as tennis, where knowing your opponent and learning how and when to anticipate their moves plays a large and significant part of competitive game play. This is because much energy, time, and patience can be expended by players by inadvertently choosing the wrong prediction to counter their opponents.
These predicative measures are perhaps best identified and acted upon by being able to match opponents actions with their previously established patterns of play and their overall approach to strategy. This means that the most competitive players will learn to find, examine, and apply patterns that they see and observe throughout play and other related experiences.
While anticipation of play alone could be useful for many players; athletes must rely on other indicators of opponents moves and actions. This can often come from visual perception of opponents and how body language is read and interpreted in order to gain an understanding of an opponent’s intention, moves, and other related strategic patterns.
Knowing an opponent’s body language can often serve as the first step towards taking a more predictive approach to addressing and countering their next action. Therefore, a more advanced development and application of Yomi is to determine how to best manipulate opponents moves and actions to serve as a strategic advantage.
Yomi and the Opponent
Sun Tsu’s classic The Art of War stated that to be most successful on the battlefield a warrior must know both themselves and their opponent. Therefore, it is useful to think about Yomi as just one part of an overall strategic equation. This means that if a player wishes to master a particular game or contest against a skilled opponent, they must not concentrate exclusively on their own abilities and development, but on their opponent’s as well.
Therefore, knowing your opponent serves as a critical aspect to developing and utilizing Yomi in game play. This can come about through gathering information and observation (i.e. examining how they have played past games or relevant specific circumstances or scenarios). In addition it can also be useful to observe and document not only past actions and interactions; but personalities; preferences, and character quirks that may provide insight into the type and degree of player’s strategy and tactics.
These types of personal observations and insights are useful for determining not only weaknesses in game play; but also in how an opponent examines, interprets, and actions information that they receive about the game state. The result of which can often provide opportunities and openings for exploiting opponents’ mistakes.
Yomi and Strategy
Virtually all applications of Yomi involve strategy. However when addressing Yomi and player interaction the focus is more on the opponent rather than the abstract state of a particular game with perfect information (i.e. Tic-Tac-Toe).
However, these game states can be valuable and influential for determining and assessing Yomi through play. This is often evident in games of chess where control of the center of the board is highly correlated with player wins. Therefore gaining, losing, or transitioning control of these spaces influence both a subjective player mindset for the opponent as well as affect the abstract game state of the match.
This is where deception or deceptive play can have a critical role with Yomi. This is often embodied with “feints,” maneuvers, or actions meant to distract or mislead opponents. By taking these actions, players “miscommunicate” or distract players as to their true actions or intentions. The term “feint” originates from the French language and was first used in swordsmanship to mislead an opponent.
In military or combat operations this is summarized in two kinds of feints: feint attacks or feint retreats. Feint attacks are meant to draw an opponent’s defensive action towards a point of assault and usually serves as kind of a diversion to dedicate resources towards the activity. Conversely, feint retreats are meant to draw an opponent’s forces and resources out in order to outmaneuver or ambush them with one’s own forces. In either case, feints are employed as deceptive tactics meant to elicit a specific response from an opponent.
In both cases, Yomi is employed by both contestants as they must determine the integrity of the move; the intended response; and their proposed or conceptualized action. Doing so determines how they would respond or act and how they think that response was determined or prepared for by their opponent. The results of which encapsulates the previously aforementioned dedication to prediction and knowing an opponent’s capabilities.
Yomi for Expert Players
This dedication to knowing a player’s own capabilities, their opponents’ capabilities, perceived actions, and response are all part of how expert players utilize and acknowledge Yomi in their own game play. Expert players will utilize and focus on Yomi to fuel their own player development and actions throughout the game.
Therefore, as players become more experienced and practiced within a specific game and rely on specific response to tactics and strategies, they then become more used to what other opponents are expected to do and respond with. In addition to knowing themselves and their opponents, expert players will know intricacies, balances, and capabilities of different aspects of the game compared to more casual players. In fighting games, this extends to knowing which characters are at an advantage of disadvantage during a specific matchup as well as how to use each character’s strengths and weaknesses against an opponent.
This level of expert play further extends to elite athletes, professionals, and competitive amateurs who can determine opponents intent and actions from examining their movement, stance, or other characteristics of their play. However, this level of observation is not always a good thing, as a greater focus on opponents perceived and planned moves might end up hindering a player’s own actions and abilities.
Therefore the most competitive expert players know that there are some weaknesses they may never be able to overcome; and instead focus on their strengths. This is particularly important when addressing how those strengths can be utilized against an opponent in specific situations which gives them a competitive advantage.
Yomi and Player Development
While the most expert players take advantage and focus on Yomi; ultimately the overall development of the player is at the forefront of its usage and application. That’s because while elementary players can become acclimated to determining their own moves and the future moves of their opponents; expert players instead focus on learning (and countering) the moves of their opponents several turns into the future.
Therefore, the central aspect to Yomi in player development is the creation of “second level thinking,” where players are concerned with how opponents may initially counter a move followed by the next few responses after that. Often, this is most accurately ascertained for symmetrical, abstract, and open information games such as chess. Fighting games provide additional challenges that are not always due to player involvement such as items and characters that may not be finely balanced for game play.
Despite this, developing players can begin to apply Yomi by first predicting what opponents will do and react to a move and then taking precautionary or pre-emptive actions to nullify a response or place them in a better position. These predictive actions can serve multiple functions. The first is to determine how to position players to allow them to win most easily. The other is to “telegraph” or unofficially communicate to opponents what they intend to do in the future and how an opponent may or may not respond.
Doing this helps to create opportunities to employ “feints” like previously discussed and to communicate potential actions that your opponent may or may not react to. All of this is to say that first understanding your own capabilities and play style serve as the first steps towards mastery and successful and repeated application of Yomi.
Yomi and Learning
Player development through Yomi is actually the review, reflection, and application of learning through the experiential learning cycle. Specifically, how mistakes are recognized and rectified through future game play that overall improves players ‘abilities. Therefore learning and Yomi are inextricably linked as observing, reflecting, and applying how patterns in opponents’ play styles are implemented to help determine and predict their future pattern of play.
Additionally, expert players’ adaptation of Yomi involves accurately assessing their opponents strengths, weaknesses, readiness, and positioning when making an assessment on the next best move. This also applies to elite athletes who are able to observe, interpret, and act on information they receive from their opponents in order to respond in kind.
Many will argue that this observation, reflection, and prediction should be done within the bounds of objective insight and reasoning. However, there is still value in observing and interpreting the emotional and psychological state of opponents through play as empathetic reasoning can also serve to better employ Yomi for strategic success.
Yomi and Empathy
One may not always consider the empathetic implications of Yomi. Especially since most of the time it is presented in a contentious and often combative environment where success can only be gained through a zero-sum game. However, you would not be alone as empathy in games are relatively novel in rewarding individuals for figuring out how other players think.
This is an interesting approach to learning, gaming, and engagement as the best moves for players are based on their ability to discern and predict other players choices, actions, moves, and reactions based on their own empathetic reasoning. There are a few cooperative table top games that fit this niche such as Codenames; Mysterium; When I Dream and Concept which seek to prioritize and emphasize players’ empathetic connections as they engage with one another to achieve personal and group goals.
These games are often starkly contrasted against simulations which are designed specifically for classroom and educational use and are more closely aligned with high fidelity recreations of the lived experiences of others. This game versus simulation divide in consideration with applied empathy can be stark, as designers often don’t appreciate and apply design choices with the intent to increase empathy for specific game situations.
Although, some designers will pursue design choices that emphasize the agency of players to make choices that will directly affect the people around them in the game. However, this choice is often not a fully pledged application towards connected empathy in game design. Rather, designers can and should use the broad spectrum of emotional connections in games by realizing and capitalizing on the emotions engendered by collective body of players for the game as well as the connections that non-player characters (NPC’s) have as well.
This connection can help players develop stronger “cognitive empathy” and allows them to develop the ability to see the world from someone else’s point of view. An outcome that could best apply to positive societal growth as a whole.
Yomi in Game Development
This dedication to connected empathy also affects and influences game design philosophies as connection to other players represents a fundamental aspect of Yomi and how players develop and progress throughout the game. As such, developers and designers should examine learning and educational games for aspects of where pacing allows players to progress based on their predictive abilities and connected empathy between themselves, the game, and their opponents.
Games most popularly focus on Yomi when the removal of random components; mechanics; that could hinder the decision making process or the application of results of player intentions and interactions. Such elements represent negative aspects of game design in which a priority is placed on the environment of play rather than the interaction between players.
The interaction between players is what represents the heart of Yomi and how decisions are changed and structured to allow for a players to take different, diverging, and diverse paths towards achieving their end goals. These diverse directions give and allow players to make decisions that are novel and evolving in spite of their opponents investment in predicting what they’ll do and when.
Takeaways
This article first drove into what Yomi is as well as how it influences and affects the prediction of actions of opponents and other players. The minds, motivations, and strategies of other players were discussed as it affects and influences Yomi. Yomi in relation to strategy and how it influences expert players was covered as well as how all players can examine and study their own actions for their own player development.
Finally, this article closed on the relationship of Yomi to learning and how an appreciation of connected empathy in games helps players both appreciate, anticipate, and react to other players’ actions and decisions.
This article was about Yomi. To learn more about gamification, check out the free course on Gamification Explained.
Dave Eng, EdD
Principal
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Cite this Article
Eng, D. (2022, August 30). What is Yomi?. Retrieved MONTH DATE, YEAR, from https://www.universityxp.com/blog/2022/8/30/what-is-yomi
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