Gaming, of all types, is immensely entertaining and satisfying. A big part of this, though, is the feeling of improving in what we’re playing. This keeps the experience engaging and exciting. But getting better at a game, be it an esport or table title, can at times be easier said than done. Let’s take a look below at three strategies sure to get you levelling up.
Does Practice Make Perfect?
We’ve all heard that 10,000 focused hours spent practicing a skill is the direct route to mastery, whether you’re a top tier athlete, musician, or gamer. Yet while the reality is a little more complex than this would suggest, there is no denying the fact that practice is a crucial element in becoming a better player.
When we practice something, we effectively teach our brains and muscles to become more efficient at accomplishing that task. The experience of having a task well integrated into our body and mind is that it requires less of us. This is why riding a bicycle is, at first, an extremely complicated process – yet before long, it’s one that we do almost automatically.
You know this feeling also when navigating around game maps that you know like the back of your hand. The goal, however, is to keep pushing this envelope of comfort. Failing to do so can result in skill plateaus.
Skill plateaus refer to when we get stuck at a particular level of development, and they are common to all branches of learning. To break out of a skill plateau often requires shocking ourselves into learning by increasing the difficulty in unexpected ways.
In gaming this could be playing against those much better than you, or placing yourself under some kind of handicap. For example, if you were playing chess, one way you could shake yourself out of a rut would be to play to a time limit.
Learning Is a Journey
This is a key factor that often flies under the radar when compared with some of the more glamorous examples on this list, but there’s no escaping the fact that knowledge is power and those endowed with a deeper understanding of the game they’re playing are going to enjoy a significant and all-pervasive advantage over those that rely purely on instinct and judgement alone.
Peel back the curtain of any game, and you soon find that there are layers of strategy, and special applications of knowledge that are only of benefit for those who are already well on their way to proficiency.
For example, while picking up the basic rules and learning the hand rankings of poker is a relatively simple affair, real methodological depth can emerge for those who go looking for it. It is for this reason that you’ll occasionally find leading platforms furnishing this title provide detailed guides for improvers on nuanced aspects of the game such as learning to categorize your opponents, to detailed mathematical models of gameplay.
This is not just in evidence with table games either. In the hit ‘looter shooter’ Destiny, PvP players are rewarded for learning about the various qualities of character abilities such as their cooldown time.
If you know roughly how long it will be before your opponent can use their crucial special attack again, you can identify an optimal moment to go on the offensive. What’s more, this will only be apparent to those with this type of understanding in-hand. At the higher levels of this game, and other esports titles like it, all players are expected to know this type of information.
Take Time Out To Teach
There is a peculiar phenomenon identified by psychologists known as the protégé effect. It suggests that people both retain information, and learn better, when they are placed in the position of teaching another.
This is because in order to teach someone, one must actively engage with their understanding of a topic in order to figure out how best to convey that understanding to another person. In effect, teaching another person causes you to revise your own understanding.
This can have a powerful impact, and in the world of gaming this is no different. Training someone how to navigate a popular CS:GO map efficiently, or guiding them through a series of popular chess openings, can be a potent way to improve our skills.
What’s more, new players will tend to ask questions that are seemingly too obvious for us to consider by ourselves. This can lead to discoveries for both parties, resulting in the teacher becoming a better player through considering the implications of such ‘beginner’ queries.
