How Do Professionals Get Good at Games

Gaming has long occupied a space of respectability not dissimilar from other sports. More schools than ever have e-sporting teams, while professional gamers make considerable money doing the things they love.

What does it take to game at the highest level?

Whether your game is League of Legends, Overwatch, or anything else, good results are the product of equally good effort.

Good gaming is a process. If you want to get better, you need to learn how to grind it out.

Define What it Means to Be Good.

Most games will give you a plethora of stats that can be a handy way to measure your progress. Kill counts and accuracy statistics can help you identify what areas need to be brushed up on. However, a comprehensive definition of what it means to be good should be more nuanced than “I want X number of kills per round.”

Get granular. Think about it this way: If you were to take a stat-based approach to playing online poker for real money, you wouldn’t want  your goal to be “Win $100.”

To get really good, you would want to understand probability. What are my odds of winning with a pair of nines? Is it statistically worthwhile to bluff? Should I fold if I don’t have a hit after the river?
 For gaming, think beyond the kill count. Focusing more on your ratios is a strong first step. Understanding how many kills you get for every death might, for example, persuade you to avoid high-risk, high-reward situations in favor of steadier progress.

While one out of every three gamers have pro-ambitions the vast majority of them fail. You have to work hard to beat the odds.

Develop a Process

Practice should be structured. Focus on developing specific skills. Obviously, the specific skill that you wish to develop will be particular to your game of choice. You might want to improve your firing speed or hone your agility. You might develop your ranged weapon accuracy or simply practice controller dexterity.

Developing a process means making a plan for how to get good at these skills, and then carrying out that plan regularly.

Note that in matches, you might not do particularly well as you focus on developing specific skills. That is ok. Better results will come as you get a stronger grasp of the basics.

Play With People Who are (A Bit) Better Than You

Video games are like tennis. It is hard to get better at playing against people who are terrible. Fun though it can be to blast away at newbs, you won’t learn much by pounding on people who don’t know the game.

You also won’t get very far playing against people who see you as the easily trounced newb. That will only put you on the fast track to a rage quit.

The sweet spot is to find people who are just slightly better than you. Good enough that you can go to school on their tactics. It's not so good that you have no hope of beating them.

Regularly audit your playing partners. It’s possible that you will outgrow the people you play with every few months if you are working hard at it. Obviously, you can still play with friends, but when it comes to competitive matches or training, you want to consistently make sure you are challenged.

Never Get Too High or Too Low

This is good advice any time you are pursuing greatness. Here’s what we mean:

• Don’t get too high on your wins. Strong results are exciting in that they indicate your hard work is paying off. That said, pretty much everyone goes on runs. Don’t assume that just because you are on a good streak, you’ve figured it all out.
• Don’t get too low on your losses. It’s also easy to get discouraged by your losses. While disappointment can fuel hard work, you don’t want to dwell too much on bad outcomes. Learn from your mistakes, and trust that they will ultimately help you achieve better results.

The same way Thomas Edison learned many ways how to not make a lightbulb, you will inevitably develop a keen understanding of how to fail at gaming. Accept that poor results are inevitable and learn from them.

Conclusion

One thing you might realize quickly? Getting good at gaming is not necessarily a fun time. Sure, it is a pleasure to watch your progress develop. Still, it’s like training for any other sport. Do you think basketball players are having a party as they do suicides up and down the boards for fifteen minutes?

Heck, they probably don’t love spending endless hours working on their dribbling either. If you want the glory, you have to grind through the drudgery. Master the basics. Develop your core competencies. Understand strategy at the highest level. That’s what it takes to get good at gaming at the highest possible level.