The key to playing video games at an elite level is largely within your control. You don’t need to be gifted with perfect genetics or play all day every day to be a top tier gamer. It ultimately comes down to adopting the mindset of relentless improvement. Bear with us while we explain how this works.
The Best of the Best Have “Learned How to Learn”
Top level gamers are excellent at learning. They’re not just going with the flow and playing on autopilot, they’re constantly thinking about why they died or lost and what they could do better next time. You may notice when you’re watching a stream/vod of a pro player that it’s very common for them to say something along the lines of “I should have done X” whenever something goes wrong. Over time, their mental database of optimal decisions grows and their gameplay becomes significantly better and more consistent.
The image above is a representation of the mental database you cultivate through playing. A novice player may have an understanding of some concepts, but the connections to other concepts are lacking or broken, some concepts are wrong and will mislead them and entire concepts are missing or misunderstood.
If you follow the steps covered in this article, you can rapidly develop your database. Over time you will reach an expert level which is represented in the image below.
With an improvement oriented mindset you will discover and link new concepts, forming meaningful connections that will greatly improve your decision making. When comparing the Novice and the Expert, it becomes apparent that the Expert is far better equipped to face any situation, which leads to consistent high level gameplay.
How to Adopt This Mentality
1) Whenever you have down time, reflect.
- If you die, get knocked down, have no enemies nearby, you’re running to a location etc, think about what has happened so far and what could have been better.
2) Learning isn’t restricted to failures, it is also important to reflect on what made you succeed in a particular situation.
3) When watching top level players play, learn from their mistakes and successes as you are watching.
- We have written a blog specifically on accelerating the development of game sense that utilises pro streams or vods here.
4) If you don’t know what you should have done, ask others for input or try something else next time; eventually you will find something that works.
5) Stick to it, the gains from adopting this mentality are mostly permanent and also transferable. Great gamers tend to excel across many games and even genres.
6) It’s okay to take a break, chill out and autopilot sometimes.
- Heavily learning focused gameplay can be exhausting and not always sustainable for prolonged sessions.