Game winning Mindset
Key factors in long term improvement focused mindset for competitive gaming.
Lets take a look at how
important your mindset is in E-Sports. A good comparison would be
sport. Professional athletes such as American football players are
known for their athletic ability and its an environment where only
the tough survive. Its also said that a teams chance of victory is
70% mental and 30% physical.
Now take a look at what is
being said here. In a game where the fastest, strongest and skilled
players meet on the field. 70% of their success is based on the teams
mindset during the game.
What do you think those
numbers are in E-Sports? I would be safe in saying, at the highest
level of E-Sports the mental aspect of the game makes up for over 80%
of your success. I say this because “Anyone can learn to aim, but
not everyone can master the game”. Aim is physical and based on
muscle memory whereas building a strong mental approach to the game
takes years and is usually dependant on things such as individual
personality, attitude, experience and the teams chemistry. We'll
touch on these subjects later.
So I guess the question
people are asking is, “What is the best mindset to take on board if
you're serious about E-Sports?”
I like to let people
figure out answers themselves. If I were to tell someone directly,
they may not be ready for the answer or able to understand the
concept. What ill do is continue so that you can figure it out for
yourself. If you are ready, the game winning mindset will leap out of
the page.
We can learn a lot about
people and about where they are going in life by the things they say.
Specifically the words they use. We can also draw conclusions about where they are headed in E-Sports based on attitudes and words they use. I had been around the Australian
Counter-Strike: Source community for over 4 years and have had many
mixed experiences speaking with different people.
It would be wrong to say I judged potential team mates on their skill alone. I judged peoples playing ability
by their attitude as that is a key factor in where they would end up
2 years from now. This is important to factor in when deciding on
team mates for a new team as well as making a choice about which team
to join.
Lets break down some of the negatives of what
people say and put them into categories.
The Excusers, The
Justifiers, The Blamers, The Whingers.
Do those words remind you
of anyone you know?
What is one thing that all
of these attitudes have in common? They all give away their personal
power to make a positive influence on the situation. They are all on
the effect side of the equation, rather than the cause side. If
you're on the cause side of the equation ie “I caused this
situation, which means I can fix it”, you have a great sense of
power as you've assumed complete responsibility for what has happened
and that means you can now take steps to change something so this
situation works out for your teams benefit next time.
Lets look at this example.
Im going to be very general here as this concept applies across all
first person shooter games. You're on a team with 2 remaining team
mates against 1 on the opposing team. You lose the round because both
of you made a simple mistake. For arguments sake, lets say you forgot
about one of the fundamental rules of your particular game and that
cost you your life. Someone on the effect side of the equation will
be defensive about it to try and shift blame to someone other than
themselves to save face. “I only rushed him because YOU did X”.
That's completely disregarding his sequence of choices leading up to
that situation and blaming someone else.
In the gaming world, I’ve
found the most effective tool for improvement is to assume
responsibility for everything in some way or another. Lets say a
mistake has been made, rather than justifying what you did to someone
else. With a reason that's going to be forgotten about tomorrow. Look
within yourself and ask yourself some quality questions. Your brain
is amazing at finding answers if you ask the right questions.
This revelation helped me
go from a nationwide player to a world class player. When I died,
when we lost a round or when we encountered a temporary defeat ( I
don't use the word failure as temporary defeat is more appropriate ).
I would ask myself a series of questions such as, “What could I
have done differently?”, “Did I give away my position to make
them concious I was there at that time?”, “Could I have
approached the situation with a different level of aggressiveness,
maybe more passively and cautious or maybe I was too slow?”. I'm
sure you can understand where we're going with these questions. Next
time your in a game, put emotion aside and start asking yourself some
quality questions when you make a mistake. Be honest to yourself, you
will be amazed at how quickly you find answers that will improve your
overall success in the long term. Remember this reflection process is
only effective if you take on board the conclusions that you draw and
put them into your game style.
Happy Fragging
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