How To Bring Your Esports Skills up to Scratch
The esports scene has positively exploded over the past 2 years with competitive gaming having now definitively broken through to mainstream awareness for the first time in its history. This is great news for the community, which has been organically building up for decades and is perfectly primed to welcome the influx of interest, sponsorship, investment and new talent that this boom-time represents.
It’s also great news for esports gamers who harbour ambitions of turning professional, as with so many brands now looking to associate themselves with rising gaming talent, there’s never been more opportunities to gain sponsorship. Yet first you need to reach the skill-level that demonstrates you’ve got what it takes to turn pro, and this can be a multifaceted process.
Below we’re looking at some core trips and tricks any would-be e-athlete ought to put into play if they hope to cut through the noise, get noticed and turn pro.
Hire a Trainer
Much like a regular athlete working under a coach or personal trainer, esports athletes of all levels stand to benefit from dedicated tuition. The reality is, esports is a legitimate competitive sport nowadays, and as such there are dozens of coaches, trainers and even full-blown esports academies out there focused on training up the next generation of esports athletes.
A good trainer will be able to identify areas for improvement in your gameplay, impart vital information about strategy and gameplay and help prepare you for competition. Like any serious endeavour, natural born talent means nothing without the huge amount of hard work and dedication required to bring it to the fore.
Research Everything About Your Game
This one may seem obvious, but it’s true that the thing that typically separates good players from great players, is understanding the minutiae of the game they play. This isn’t only true for esports players – it’s a perennial maxim.
You’ll seldom find a professional chess player who doesn’t know how to implement gambits such as Alekhine’s Defence or the Benko Opening, nor is it common for skilled roulette players to lack a solid understanding of roulette’s number layout and how it can be used to enact any number of effective betting strategies.
In esports, the type of knowledge players must acquire is as diverse as the games played – for example, a sim-racing player needs to know a wide range of specific skills as well as understanding the real-world physics that underpin them. Without this knowledge, they will find it difficult to move between different cars with distinct weight-balances.
A MOBA gamer, on the other hand, will find themselves holding a clear advantage over their opponents if they have at least a cursory understanding of the distinct characteristics of each player character, including knowing their strengths, and any weaknesses that can be exploited.
If you’re serious about breaking through to a professional context in your chosen esports game, you should stop at nothing when it comes to learning your game inside-out.
Practise Makes Perfect
You probably don’t need someone to tell you to play your favourite video game. While the notion that achieving mastery in an instrument, or any given skill, takes 10,000 hours has been largely debunked, there’s no denying that the best in the world in any field dedicate enormous amounts of time and energy in practising and honing their craft.
In order to make your practice sessions feel intentional, consider logging your stats as you go, as well as recording any notes about things you observe, areas where you can improve, and skills you’re working on cultivating and building up.
This kind of information will prove priceless in the long run, as it will help you measure your progress over time. Not only will this prove to motivate you, but it will give you a mass of data to pore over that can help guide your long-term development. And that is worth its weight in gold.
