I'm curious about video games (specifically) and learning (in general). What in your opinion is the quickest, most effective way of learning faster and getting better? I'm not talking about going Pro, just being good enough to be competitive.
YouTube. Watch someone who is very good at the game.
> What in your opinion is the quickest, most effective way of learning faster and getting better?
Humans are really good at imitating. Even better than critical thinking in some ways.
I remember seeing a video with a “trick box” with a bunch of dummy knobs and levers. [1] A researcher demoed it to a child, doing all sorts of superfluous actions before finally dispensing the candy. The child imitated and got the candy.
Then they replaced the opaque box with a clear one, so that it was obvious that only the last action mattered. The child still performed the ritual before getting the candy.
A chimpanzee was given the same task and quickly got the candy by skipping all the unnecessary steps.
> YouTube. Watch someone who is very good at the game.
You can learn a lot of strategy from YouTube, but I suspect that some YouTubers effectively cheat with their videos. Maybe they save-scum and play for days to get 10 minutes of great footage to make them look like a rock-star. Maybe they use mods or use cheat codes.
I have seen suggestions about watching YT of people that are really good but I don't see any suggestions to record your own game play. Record your matches and watch/analyze it later to see what you're doing well and not so well. Compare this to top YT players to see how your play differs, make adjustments. Also don't play for really long periods of time competitively, take breaks even if that is a few goof around matches or actual breaks. Small improvements daily is going to work better learning anything rather than something like 12 hour sessions.
If you're playing a shooter game, are you moving in/out of cover? are you pre-firing corners? If there is radar, are you using that to your advantage? Are there perks on weapons/special abilities? Are you chaining these or getting the perks to go off? Are there other utility weapons/gear to use like grenades/flashbangs/stun? Learn how to time those, throw those accurately, etc. Are there options/settings that are better for you like a square radar image (its larger), color adjustments, controller settings, field of view, etc.
If you're playing a battle royale style game then learn the mechanics of circles closing and timing of those, many bad matches are had wandering around looking for "better" loot and getting behind. Think of the closing circle as a spiral and move clockwise in the area being closed in between the closing circle and safe zone. As it closes players will be literally running in front of you to get to the safe zone. The magic in this is as you rotate with the circle you have "cleared" the area just behind you since its the gas/bad circle so you don't need to worry too much about people coming in behind you (still check).
Besides the mechanical/knowledge parts of it, one important thing (at least in my opinion) is cultivating an improvement focused mindset. Playing To Win [0] is a good overview. If something in the game doesn't go your way, blame your own understanding of the game and try to figure out what you didn't know or what you did wrong.
Team-based games like League of Legends can be kind of frustrating simply because your control over the outcome of the match is proportionally less than in a 1v1 game. It doesn't mean you can't influence the match to an outsized degree, but even the best players lose matches sometimes because their teammates perform too poorly to be "carried" to victory. Managing this frustration and taking a long view of performance is key to improving at these kinds of games (or at least climbing the ranked ladder).
Practice like you are learning a musical instrument or chess. Break it down into very specific subskills (like a specific chess endgame or guitar picking technique) and practice those in isolation in addition to your usual practice. Also find a coach if possible.
I remember watching a video about learning a skill in 20 hours. The topic boils down to 4 points that seems fairly straight forward.
I can't do it good justice myself so here is a link to those 4 points:
https://sourcesofinsight.com/learn-anything-20-hours/
Step 2: play video games that reward deliberate practice and skill
Step 3: put in effort on reducing lag, especially if you're playing games developed in the time of CRTs. Modern games are built and tested with modern everything and you get more time to react to things, but games built for CRTs expect nothing more than a couple gate delays between the video out and the electron beam, and for the inputs to be current when sampled. Modern displays have a lot of nice things (convergence is great, vertical and horizontal alignment is perfect, the picture size doesn't change when the background gets brighter or darker, etc), but they usually also have an image processing pipeline that's measured in milliseconds, some take much longer than others. Bluetooth controls use bluetooth, enough said.
Wired controllers and a CRT won't make you good, but flakey wireless and a laggy LCD might make you bad.
Step 4: make a practice plan and use it, and adapt it as necessary.
I'd like to add that depending on the game or game type, you might want to also incorporate "drills". It's easier to practice some things when not under pressure or overwhelmed by lots of decision making.
Edit: Drill should be like... If you play 7 days a week, have about an hour to an hour and a half of drills a week. Pulled these estimates out of my ass kinda, butt the general consensus is you should play way more than you do drills. Kinda like when practicing sports, I imagine
For example, if you're thinking of playing FPS games, they there's great aim drills for aiming techniques (flicks, tracking, microflicks, pre aiming, crosshair discipline, etc) in Kovaaks. But then you also gotta think about movement (long peeks, short peeks, dodges, strafes, etc) and positioning (corners, high ground) that are best practiced in game.
For mmorpgs it's all about positioning, cues and your practicing rotation timings (instead of aim drills) and counters. Understanding how buffs and debufs stack and interact. Movement can be important and a bit of meta gaming too
Also gotta think at a little meta (how does the game process input and animations, animatio cancels) for really competitive levels.
I would say mechanical skill is usually 20% and the 80% is understanding when and where to be, and what to do; only then does mechanical skill matter. If you are out of position and have great mechanical skills, you will get punished before you can utilise your aim/rotation to their fullest potential, but with good positioning (ie cover, staying at the edge of range, highground control) gives you more opportunities to execute if your mechanical skill fails you.
> I would say mechanical skill is usually 20% and the 80% is understanding when and where to be, and what to do; only then does mechanical skill matter.
Speaking of mechanical skills, step 0 is setting up a comfortable, ergonomic workspace to play. If you're going to be spending a lot of time on any task, you want to make sure it's not going to wreck your body. PC gaming is easy ergonomically, because we know how to setup an ergonomic computer workstation, but pay a bit more attention to the mouse. Console gaming, you can setup like a computer workstation, and put the controller where it's comfortable. Or do a traditional tv + couch setup, but at least make sure the heights of things are good.
I have a buddy who seems to be crazy good at pretty much every game. He always chooses the hardest difficulty for every game. His secret? He will deliberately learn the meta for the game in question by watching YouTube. That and good reflexes.
30 years is a long time. Just out of curiosity, do you have any thoughts on the general trivia (things like flow state triggers, deliberate practice etc.) that exists in this niche?
You're talking to the wrong guy for any of that stuff. I suck at games and play them on easiest settings any time it's available. I consider difficulty in games a personal insult to me from the developers with one glaring exception of anything from FromSoftware except Dark Souls 2.
Different games and genres will have different ratios of luck / inborn talent and reflexes / research and training. But over time I've found the best way to get value out of games is to not care how good or bad you are and just enjoy the ride of seeing something new or doing something you just can't do in real life.
This, specific deliberate practise is likely to yield the best results.
For learning in general, I highly recommend reading "The Art of Learning" by Josh Waitzkin. He was a chess prodigy and GM, (subject of the movie and book "Searching for Bobby Fischer") who then became a world champion at martial arts, so has an interesting perspective on learning really diverse skills.
Fun fact: I met Josh at a dinner party in 2020-ish and when he heard I was in tech he spent the whole conversation wanting my opinion on where AI was going to go next, what DeepMind were going to do etc.
As has been stated in other comments, the type of game you are looking at dictates what needs to be learned to get better.
Shooters require a different skillset than say an RTS, which is quite different from a turnbased Strategygame, which is completely different to a mechanical skillbased game like tetris, which is different to a card game like magic or Hearthstone.
If you are looking to get better at videogames in general, just play different videogames and try to identify what skillsets are required in them.
If you have a specific one in mind, or a genre, more detailed advice could be given.
Read the guides. Watch a couple YT vids, usually people will post Let's Play vids and/or strategy & HowTos.
And then, like all things, just doing it. You don't get better at running by reading running 'zines, you just go out there and beat your feet. Same deal with coding, same with cooking, etc. etc.
Also recommend getting a good chair, desk, comfy setup, etc. It's a lot easier to focus when everything else is working for you. Same holds true for a lot of other work.
Aside from practice, of course, it depends on the genre. Most of the time though, I find that looking for the community and consuming some of the content they create is a quick way to get up to speed on the "meta". Simply observing good players on YT, or reading comments on the subreddit, etc., will help draw the map from beginner to expert level. That allows to focus on specific tactics or aspects of the game that are low hanging fruit (in terms of making improvements).
Most games do not follow real physics 100%. Most of those discrepancies were added in order to make the game more interesting. F.e. the double jump, there is no such thing in real world. Learning those by reading/watching guides will give you a noticeable boost. The same boost can be achieved by playing many many hours and discovering all these little tricks one by one.
Also, there is no stronghold in a good map design. There is always a way for someone to come behind your back. That holds true for both you and your opponents. With your headphones, you only have to swerve left and right to “see” all around you. If you ever wonder how someone can react so fast.
In case of video games, playing with real life friends makes a huge difference. We are naturally competitive creatures but sometimes our brain doesn't register online players as a threat or competitor. So we don't work as hard.
I am usually very causal gamer but whenever playing with friends, I will naturally work harder, search tips online, and, of course, learn from each other.
If it's something like Rocket League or Overwatch (fast, twitch games), there's no shortcut - maybe watching a few videos will help explain the mechanics - but all you can really do is practice.
For most games though, reading the wiki is the best way to accelerate your knowledge of the game.
Let's Plays are often pretty good, if the creator really explains their thought process.
First, watch some guides and be sure you have the basics down.
But after that, coaching is the best way to get better fast. Players rarely know what they're bad at, and a good coach will spot and correct your mistakes quickly.
I think it's crucial to very early on understand the scope, rules and UI of the game: what is possible? what is the goal? what are the elements to interact with? then it's all about exposure and deliberate practice
Improvement mostly comes down to practice and getting things like movement/mechanics into muscle memory. Then the question becomes how to make your practice efficient and realistic. Then isolate skills that will have the most impact on your gameplay and practice them. Proper decision making, strategy, and game sense must be studied from others, learned from experience, and learned from watching your own gameplay to be aware of common mistakes or bad habits. Someone else in the thread said this but when you make a mistake or fail you must blame it on your understanding of the game, become very critical of mistakes and ask yourself what you would do next time.
From scratch it would look something like this:
Start out by learning the basics of the game just by playing for a few hours. A few youtube videos on beginner tips and best practice and general wisdom can help. Some games have optimal settings you should generally be close to.
Use youtube or twitch.tv to watch other people playing. Depends on the game but typically I wouldn't recommend watching a professional since they are just in another realm. Watch a more regular player or just someone closer to your skill level, take notes about how they play and patterns/tricks/strategy/anything that you notice that worked out for them that you want to add to your gameplay.
Once you find something they do that you think will most likely improve your gameplay work on it. Sometimes these are one-off easy things to add to your skillset (like some simple knowledge) and sometimes they are more situational or that player has practiced it to get consistent.
For an example with FPS games, biggest thing would be to hit the range/practice mode and just shoot. Watch how a pro player practices and mimic it. Throw on a playlist you like and spend 10-30 minutes at least, more if you don't get bored of it or are really serious. Look up youtube videos on shooting/practicing tips from high level players. Making the practice as realistic as possible is also what matters so if there is a casual mode where you get many encounters with players to practice outside a competitive environment that is great too. All of these should be combined and if you say you spend an hour doing 15 minutes of each exercise you lay out for yourself you will see noticeable improvement.
Learning not to hesitate and having your shooting/aim and reaction time come down to muscle memory as much as possible is a high level thing you want to start developing asap. (assuming FPS games of course!)
Definitely takes some dedication but doable if you wanted it. Playing games at a high level is a great experience and very fun! Wish you luck.
i am pretty surprised so few people identified what is by far the best way to quickly get better at (virtually) any game: watching a very skilled player play. especially if they are introspective / able to explain why they are doing what they are doing. literally, just watch Twitch streams.
all the other metalearning stuff the other commenters point out works even better when watching the gameplay of someone who "knows" the things that to you are still "unknown unknowns". when the skilled player makes a choice that you yourself wouldn't have made, stop and ask yourself why she did that-- was it a contextual decision? was your read on the game state just categorically wrong? is there some underlying principle that eludes you, or is the difference more a byproduct of her inhabiting a competitive universe of equally highly-skilled players that plays by different rules?
in terms of the "micro" aka "hands-related" aspects of video games, the only way to improve those specific skills is via practice/doing, although it doesn't necessarily need to be practice specific to that game to be generally quite helpful, much in the way that playing any sport improves hand-eye coordination. i have found that time i put into mastering any specific game tends to have positive externalities for my gameplay in other games as well.
once you reach a certain level, however, it is definitely valuable to identify key high-leverage mechanics and mastering them via more specific practice (e.g. difficult, but highly impactful ability combos)-- even a little goes a looong way compared to other players at your skill level, who usually don't put in that dedicated of practice (until you reach god tier).
and one more point on watching skilled players play: while you might think that it's impossible to glean much from observing someone who just has wayyy more raw mechanical skill than yourself, oftentimes you can actually distill a lot about how to put yourself in the best positions to succeed with minimal amounts of risk (minimax / maximin thinking). it's usually a sign of bad play to put one's self in a situation that requires raw-outskilling one's opponent ("<something something Art of War something winning the battle before it even begins>"). that said, while you're learning, it is very valuable to put yourself in these sorts of scenarios, even if it leads to worse results in the short term (they call it "limit testing").
> it's usually a sign of bad play to put one's self in a situation that requires raw-outskilling one's opponent.
Mechanical skills are good, but mechanical skills and good positioning are great. Most people only think about shooting in the shooter genre. Typically, when I win, my kills were as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. There are only a few good defensive positions in a given map. Once I hold one down, you have to outnumber me by at least 3 to 1 to kill me (Apex Legends) (or push me out with ordinances, but the same bad players never use them).
I played Apex Legends (Shooter) almost exclusively since 2019, and Dirt Rally 2 (Race Sim), a while before that. Both games have a high skill ceiling. What helps me were:
- Research. While the game may have a tutorial, some mechanism may be hidden or assumed by the devs that you're already familiar with them. DR2 was a sim, so I had to learn a lot of real rally stuff (Manual is better than automatic). I played a few shooters before Apex, but each patch rotates the meta, and you have to keep up to date about how to adjust your play style.
- Watching people play (YouTube, Twitch). Other than the technical stuff and mechanical skills, there are a lot of macro and micro decisions that can only be learned by trial and errors. Or watching people do them and reasoning from first principles on why they do it. You either play a lot, or watch people who are excellent play.
- Critical mindset. Everytime you make a mistake, I make a mental note on the cause (bad decision, lack of mechanical skills, or just bad luck,...) and how I can do better next time. Only the mechanical skill should be instinctual, anything else should be planned and strategized. A loss or a win should be explained by the string of decisions taken since the start of the game.
- Mechanical skills. You can't get around this. You have to splurge the time to actually do the stuff. In a sim, that means I have to relate the pressure on the analog trigger with the amount of acceleration and brake. And how much I have to move the stick to steer by a specific angle, as well as knowing when to shift up and down by ear. In Apex, it means recoil control, tracking, counting bullets mentally while shooting, all the movement stuff, and recognizing the audio cues.
TL;DR. You notice you're doing something wrong, you learn what it is, and you practice the correct way. This was a hard requirement for playing the Soul series.
In addition, it helps if you can immerse yourself in the game. Reloading feels as natural to me as actually reloading a gun with my hands. Steering a car feels like I'm moving a toy car with my hand. Visual and audio cues should be triggers to make your fingers move. You don't see the enemy as a character on the screen, the enemy is actually before you and you rotate to put him/her/it right in front of you. Racing is all about feeling, there are only two things, your speed and your trajectory, and you're adjusting to make them feel right.
> What in your opinion is the quickest, most effective way of learning faster and getting better?
Humans are really good at imitating. Even better than critical thinking in some ways.
I remember seeing a video with a “trick box” with a bunch of dummy knobs and levers. [1] A researcher demoed it to a child, doing all sorts of superfluous actions before finally dispensing the candy. The child imitated and got the candy.
Then they replaced the opaque box with a clear one, so that it was obvious that only the last action mattered. The child still performed the ritual before getting the candy.
A chimpanzee was given the same task and quickly got the candy by skipping all the unnecessary steps.
[1] https://youtu.be/L8spFl1iJfs