"Your game will need to attract the hardcore players who play at an insanely high level. They're your opinion leaders. If a game can stand up to the rigors of tournament play---which is orders of magnitude more rigorous than you might believe---then it will be able to hold their attention. As players get better, they will get more into your game, not less into it. The hardcore players, as opinion leaders, influence a big part of the casual market.

Just look at the examples: Street Fighter, Starcraft, and Quake. All three games have some problems at tournament level play, but on the whole, they hold together surprisingly well. They can withstand the harsh extremes of expert players trying to eke out every possible advantage...even after years of play. If these games couldn't do that, they certainly wouldn't have been the hits they are. There would have been no tournament scenes. Interest would have died away. They would not be perceived as THE standards of competition that they are.

Lots of people are qualified to make a game fun for beginners. The real trick is making it still be a game at all once the ridiculously clever top players get a hold of it. That's the trick, as well as the brass ring, for that's what the market rewards via the bandwagon effect."

-- David Sirlin, game designer/producer and Street Fighter pro player, in an article adjoining his book Play To Win

nice to see someone outside of our circle jerk acknowledging the best competitive games out there :)