How to Get Better At Video Games
Everybody has that one friend who seems to be amazing at every video game they play. It’s like some people are just naturally gifted at video games and can pick up any game and start dominating. Why is that and how can you improve your game and play on a much more competitive level?
Jonathan 'Fatal1ty' Wendel is perhaps the best known and arguably the most successful pro gamer ever. He certainly accomplished a lot to promote competitive level gaming at a time when e-Sports was still in its infancy. Wendel says the only way to get better, the only way to be number one in anything is to 'practice, practice, practice.' If you want to improve your skills in a certain video game you need to practice. Play that game everyday and play it a lot. Over time you will get better at the game through the accumulation of sheer experience.
But as previously mentioned, some people seem to be naturally good. On the other hand, there are many players who can put in hundreds or even thousands of games played without seeming to improve much upon their skill at all. On the internet web series Pure Pwnage the main character, Jeremy, remarks that you can train a noob but he’ll just end up being a 'trained noob.' Obviously that show is a comedy but is this actually true and if so why?
In order to answer that, we need to analyze what game experience actually does for you. When you become experienced with a game it means that you attain a better understanding of that game’s mechanics. In other words, the more you play it, the more you will know what beats what. You can then use this deep knowledge to your advantage. Gamers who seem naturally skilled at games simply have greater innate skill at picking up a game’s mechanics and exploiting them whereas a 'regular' gamer needs to develop this ability over a longer period of time.
Strategy is another part of it. The more games played you have, the more strategies you will have seen and/or tried. You will come to know what tactics work and what tactics fail and you’ll know the proper response to overcome certain types of tactics being used against you. The more you play a game, the more different kinds of play styles you will encounter. When something is familiar to you, you know the proper response based on past observations. In the anime Rurouni Kenshin, Shishio told Kenshin that once he sees a technique, it will never work on him again. If something is new to you, then you might not know how to overcome it and that is when difficulties ensue. For example, if you have never faced an enemy Hornet on Spire before, you may not know how to defeat it. Most Elite weapons don’t even hurt vehicles and it’s almost impossible to hit a Hornet with a charged Plasma Pistol unless it’s flying really low. But if you’ve seen people using Hornets hundreds of times already, you would know the Plasma Launcher is the most effective response and will immediately start moving to the area of the map where that weapon spawns. Therefore just playing the game a lot will help you get better.
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