> 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.
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).
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).
And here is the video itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ("
- 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.