
Playing Starcraft 2 Might Make You Smarter - flavmartins
http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/19/playing-starcraft-2-might-make-you-smarter/
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ninjin
I will be the first one to admit it, I do occasionally play games as a means
to relaxation and I bought StarCraft 2 yesterday. Long story short, playing
against other human players on ladder is among the most stressful things I
have experienced in a long time. There are thousands of things that can go
wrong, am I about to run out of supply? Are all my production facilities
currently being utilised? Are there enough workers getting minerals? How about
gas? When will the gas and minerals run out? You may have noticed that I was
just talking about the economic aspects above. Now add the complexity of an
intelligent opponent that is out to kill you and your stress levels are about
to go through the roof. StarCraft is multi-tasking decision-making and micro-
management heaven (or hell for some of us) and I am not the least bit
surprised if coping with the pressure can actually somehow benefit you. It is
a fun, but goodness me, Blizzard did make one heck of a complex game.

~~~
gabemart
That's exactly my experience. I occasionally watch big tournaments and a
couple of years ago decided to have a go myself. When I was growing up I
played a lot of Westwood RTS games so I thought I'd be able to get to a level
of basic competency fairly quickly.

I was completely wrong. That game is killer, stressful and mentally exhausting
(for me). It became clear to me that either I could make SC2 my full-time
pursuit and become passably decent in perhaps a couple of months, or I could
stop playing. I chose the latter.

People who make an earnest effort to improve often talk about "ladder anxiety"
\- the fear of playing ranked games. I didn't understand it at all before
trying to play, but I do now - it's a complex fear that combines fear of
letting yourself down with fear of being embarrassed in front of a peer and
fear of losing some of the rank you've been diligently working up.

I can completely understand how it's a rewarding, challenging pursuit for some
people, but for me it draws from the same pool of focus, willpower and
determination I use to get actual work down. I'd rather play a twitchy FPS in
my downtime that, for me, draws from a different source.

~~~
aspensmonster
That's the type of experience that is a big turn off for me in games as well.
People spend so much time studying the mechanics and economics of the game
that eventually, pretty much every match plays out in exactly the same form.
For RTS games, the build trees often get set in stone. Deviate from the one
feasible tree and you might as well just be giving up because after a few
minutes your opponent has just enough units to wipe you (and, since you didn't
follow the build tree, you won't be able to counter it in time). For team FPS
games, if your team gets good enough, the first few kills almost always
determine the winner of the match, because whoever wins the first wave
controls map flow. They control weapon drops, ammo drops, and they probably
have the spawn points and probabilities memorized too.

I suppose there is a certain mathematical attraction in pushing a game to its
limits like that. But I've never been able to actually _enjoy_ playing that
way.

~~~
giblaz
I usually don't log in, but your post had some common noob misconceptions
about Starcraft and I wanted to clear them up before people take them as fact.

>People spend so much time studying the mechanics and economics of the game
that eventually, pretty much every match plays out in exactly the same form.

Maybe on ladder, but in a tournament you will never see the same Best of 3 on
a map... ever. That's the beauty of a tournament setting - the players are
mostly playing _each other_ and trying to metagame one another. On ladder,
that's a problem that is solved by new maps in the map pool. Yes, maps get
learned and then players will learn if pressure builds or fast expoing are
strong on the map, but even then players can metagame their opponent on those
maps (like going for a super early all-in on a map that favors macro play).
SCOUTING IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT SKILL IN THE GAME. Players with
phenomenal mechanics like ForGG & MarineKingPrime lose professional games
constantly because of their bad scouting, on the same maps, vs the same
opponents, because their opponent is doing strategies to counter what they
usually do. It doesn't play out the same, ever. (although MKP needs to stop
going CC first on the low ground and losing :) )

>Deviate from the one feasible tree and you might as well just be giving up
because after a few minutes your opponent has just enough units to wipe you
(and, since you didn't follow the build tree, you won't be able to counter it
in time).

Starcraft 2 has harder counters than SC:BW did, but SC2 still has maintained
the beautiful quality that SCBW did in that you can counter any strategy with
a number of options, and each has their benefits and disadvantages to you as
the game progresses. It's a commonly stated and completely wrong opinion that
the game is so figured out that there are exact responses you must do in
certain situations. When you're lower league (Bronze to Diamond) it will help
to play more robotically, but as you get better you must be willing to throw
your opponent off and respond to what they're doing unexpectedly. It benefits
you to have the "knowledge" advantage in that game, unsurprisingly.

I'd like to mention that I've been Masters 8 seasons in a row, so this post
comes from someone who has invested a lot of time into the game. Hopefully I
didn't come off as too much of an ass but given how complex the game TRULY is,
when people try to simplify it and then paint the game negatively for that
simplified aspect... well I can't be having that. =]

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zamalek
I think this article is a bad summary of a _VERY VERY BAD_ summary
([http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57600089-76/study-40-hours...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57600089-76/study-40-hours-
of-complex-starcraft-is-good-for-the-brain/) ).

Firstly the candidates were only selected from people who usually played less
than 2 hours a week (interestingly no male candidates were selected due to the
lack of ones that fit that criteria). The research was for 40 hours _and that
's it_. There is no talk about the possibility of diminishing returns if you
play it for several years, or whether you get brain rot because other parts of
your brain go unused.

I'm not saying that Starcraft doesn't make you smart, I'm saying next time
link the research and not a Tech Crunch article. If you do play Starcraft the
only rationalization you need for playing it is that you enjoy it.

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DominikR
Back in the days, I spent an enormous amount of time playing Warcraft III
competetively, and was somewhere in the top 100 globally.

There are definitely things that I have learned back then while playing RTS
games:

\- how to hold a team (clan) together and generally work as a team

\- training a _lot_ and working hard on myself

\- learning from my own failures (and analyzing my own replays), because in a
1vs1 situation it was always me that fucked up when I lost. I could never
explain or rationalize that away.

\- dealing with stressful situations and as ridiculous as it may sound,
overcoming fears by using builds (changing strategies) I am not comfortable or
confident with when all other plans failed.

But I wouldn't go as far as saying that RTS games make you a smarter person.
It's always a question of determination and willingness to work hard, as it is
in any other field where you choose to work in.

One factor in RTS games that might help facilitate determination is
infrastructure.

In RTS games you have the infrastructure to compete with eachother on equal
terms, which you simply can't do in many other fields you might be interested
in as a kid because of barriers that prevent you from entering.

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daemonk
I don't doubt that playing Starcraft will build mental abilities. But if
someone is playing Starcraft to become smarter, then they should probably
think about other activities that will give you the same benefits in a faster
and more domain relevant way.

It's a great game. I love watching it. And I support professional players
because they provide a source of entertainment. But it's not anything more
than that.

~~~
bayesianhorse
Like what activities? If you don't like it, don't play it.

The key point is that playing SC2 seems to improve skills beyond the activity
itself. Not a lot of activities have been shown to do that.

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tosh
I just got HotS a few days ago and started to write about the parallels I see
to running a startup & building a great product.

Not ready to play ladder yet but I'm motivated to get there :)

~~~
vladimirralev
Yes, I think one of the first things you learn playing Starcraft is how much
you suck at management. You play and it feels right as your play at your
maximum pace. And later in the game or when watching the replay you discover
how many mistakes you've made and how many things you just forgot to do and
didn't even notice.

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Dewie
And IME it stresses me out badly, so it's a trade off for me.

