How To Get Good At Gaming
Introduction
If you want to get good at gaming, you obviously need to practice. You also need decent gear that doesn’t hold you back. However, getting good at gaming (any game) is as much about your mindset as it is about getting those sweet, sweet multi kills. Someone who practices for one hour each day and has the right mentality will improve much faster than someone who mindlessly grinds for three hours every day.
If you don’t have the right mindset, you will hit a plateau at a certain point, and in order to truly unlock your potential as a player, you need to incorporate certain ideas and concepts into your routine. In this article, we’ll give you some tips that you can apply to any game you’re trying to learn. No matter if you’re grinding for the highest rank in your game of choice or you’re just learning the game, you’ll find some applicable tips here.
Get familiar with the (basic) mechanics and concepts of your game
This is a very obvious tip, so it’s a short one.
Make sure that you’ve mastered the basic mechanics of whatever game it is that you’re playing. Some games are easier to grasp on a basic level than others, but you should make sure you’re up to date with all the powerups, weapons, maps, characters, and so on.
Familiarize yourself with the game before you start grinding. Again, it sounds obvious, but there are tons of players with hundreds of hours in their game of choice who don’t know about basic gameplay mechanics or interactions.
Stay up to date with the meta
This tip builds on the first tip. If you want to be competitive in any game, you need to stay up to date with the meta. This doesn’t mean that you need to meticulously read all the patchnotes for every single update, but you don’t want to be that person who is running around with weapons or characters that have been nerfed into the ground, wondering why you’re not getting the results you used to get.
For most popular games, you’ll find content creators who create easy-to-digest summaries when big updates drop. Following your game’s (competitive) subreddit is also great for this.
Watch/analyze your own gameplay
This is something that you’ll read and hear everywhere, and that’s for a good reason. Watching your own gameplay is one of the fastest routes to improving as a player. If there’s one tip you take away from this article, it should be this one. There’s a reason pros spend so much time going over their own games.
When you’re in a match, you’re in the heat of battle. Everything moves fast, enemies are trying their hardest to outplay you, and your brain is fully focused on one or two things max. This means that you’re absolutely going to miss things.
If you rewatch your games with a purpose, you will find tons of things you didn’t notice while the game was live. Look at your positioning, crosshair placement, timing, decision-making, and how you respond under pressure. Ask yourself: Was that fight necessary? Did I check that corner? Why did I push there?
The goal is not to find 50/50 situations or singular mistakes: you’re looking for recurring mistakes or bad habits that you might not even realize you’re making when you’re gaming. Maybe you reload too quickly. Perhaps you always forget to check one specific corner. Maybe your cool popflash doesn’t blind anyone because you throw it slightly wrong. It could be mechanical, too. Maybe you have a habit of flicking too far, for example.
Watching your own games can be painful at times, but it is one of the most effective ways of becoming a better player.
Treat losses as a learning opportunity
Losing is frustrating. No one likes to lose. But you can take something away from every game. Ask yourself some questions. Is my aim up to par? Am I making the correct decisions? Am I playing with my team or going solo?
Unless the other team or player is cheating or smurfing, there’s a legitimate reason they’re winning. Finding out why and acting on that can make you a much more complete player. Be honest with yourself and identify where it went wrong (during the game or after), then work on that aspect of your game.
Of course you can always be stuck with terrible teammates and feel like you’re doing everything right. But even if you’re outscoring your team by orders of magnitude, odds are there are things you could be doing better.
It’s a cliche, but it’s true. Losses are often more valuable as a learning tool than stomps where the enemy basically served themselves on a platter.
Play focused, try to limit ‘autopilot mode’
If you’re trying to improve, you should have a mindset to improve. Going on autopilot is not going to help you with that.
Playing on autopilot (i.e. just going through the motions without thinking about anything) is fine if you’re playing a casual session or you’re not really focused on the grind. However, if you’re playing to improve, you want to challenge your brain. Be intentional with every action.
Actively think about your utility usage, check angles with a purpose, try to keep a constant eye on what the enemy might be doing, … Set little goals for yourself. Goals like ‘I’m going to be mindful of my positioning‘ and then stay engaged with those goals during the game, and be honest with yourself about how you’re doing in real-time. One or two at the same time should do it.
A short, but very focused session is worth way more for your improvement than an all-nighter where you didn’t have one critical thought about your own gameplay.
Don’t overdo it – take breaks
A human being can only focus for so long. There’s not a single player who can stay at the peak of their mental capabilities for hours at a time. So don’t feel like you need to grind to get good at gaming. Shorter, purposeful sessions are worth way more than mindless grinding sessions. If you really want to get to the top levels of any game, you’ll want to be playing a bit almost daily. But that doesn’t mean that you need to spend hours upon hours in your game.
Develop a consistent routine
Consistency is key. That’s true for a lot of sports and hobbies. It’s also true for gaming. If you want to improve consistently, you need to be playing consistently. Playing a match or two every other week simply won’t cut it.
As we mentioned in the previous point, that doesn’t mean that you need to be glued to your screen though. If you don’t feel like grinding or you can’t commit to a full competitive match, you can do some aim training in deathmatch, watch some of your own gameplay, or learn about strategies and gameplay ideas online.
Learn from better players and pros
Pros get paid to play games for a reason: they’re the best. They’ve got a grasp on the game that’s matched by few people on earth, so there’s tons to learn from them. Nowadays, many pros actively stream or at least have a YouTube channel. And even if they don’t, you can learn a ton from watching professional matches.
Obviously, pros are just really good mechanically. In that sense, there’s not much to learn from a pro spraying down an entire team with pixel-perfect precision. But pros also have top-level theoretical knowledge of the game. The amount of handy off-angles, gameplay ideas, and team strategies you can learn from just watching a single pro game is amazing.
If you’re away from your PC or you’re done playing for the day, it’s always a good idea to watch some pros do their thing. Learning from the best is a proven way of getting better. We list the Youtube and Twitch channels (where applicable) for all pros on our website. So just pick a game, find your favorite pro, and get to it.
Eliminate distractions
This is quite an obvious tip, but a lot of people seem to overestimate how good they’re brain is at multitasking.
If you’re playing to improve, get rid of all distractions. Don’t have music on in the background, put your phone away, and get rid of your meme feed on your second monitor. All these things are just distracting at best, and at worst they actively handicap your ability to play the game by hiding important sounds.
In games like VALORANT, CS2, and Rainbow Six Siege, where you have to sit rounds out when you die, you should also stay in the game if you’re dead. Don’t tab out and start watching a YouTube video. Tabbing out completely takes you out of the game, and if you stay in the game you might see some round-winning info that the remaining players missed.
If you want to get good and improve, you want to be focused on one thing only, and that’s the game itself. Take breaks to wind down in between matches.
Conclusion
Getting really good at gaming isn’t easy. It takes dedication, hours upon hours of practice and, perhaps most importantly, the correct mindset. After reading this article, you should be ready to implement some really handy tips and best practices that will elevate your performance as a gamer. Stay positive, focus on improving as a player rather than just grinding out matches trying to see some rank number go up, and be honest with yourself and your strengths and weaknesses. You’ll see rapid progress that way.
Good luck out there, and thanks for reading!
