-sports and competitive gaming are a unique product of the digital age. While there is an uproar of online debate about whether or not they count as actual sports or not, the fact of that matter is that E-sports have become a full and thriving community of people all over the world. These games not only cover many different genres and styles, they have live tournaments all over the world that regularly fill stadiums in ways that regular sports wish they could. Most games, no matter how big or small, have some kind of online following that evolve into competitive atmospheres.
But competitive gaming specifically usually refers to sitting in the big chairs for the big events that hand out millions of dollars of real money every year. This is the world that many aspiring competitive gamers look towards when they imagine a career in the gaming world. And becoming a part of this world professionally or just for fun can be incredibly difficult, so here are a couple of good ways to get started with competitive gaming.
#1: Pick your game
Before anything else, you should probably decide what game you want to play. While many people do play multiple, restricting yourself to one game at first is a good way to focus your efforts in one place.
There are many, many different games to choose from when you begin your competitive gaming journey. So when picking one, there are two main things to keep in mind. One, pick a game that’s well-established in the E-sports scene, like League of Legends or Street Fighter. These games have large followings, meaning more people to play with and more community to interact with as you start. And two, pick a game that you’re good at. If you’re not good at any games then reconsider getting into competitive gaming because it’s an incredibly high skill environment. But with some practice and luck, anyone can become skilled at anything, and games are no different. Either way, picking a game you are good at (or you want to be good at) gives you a headstart in the space. There are a couple of main genres to choose from.
Fighting games
As mentioned, fighting games like Street Fighter, Tekken, or Guilty Gear are common games in competitive gaming circles. Most of these games you play solo against a single opponent. These games are pretty easy to understand but have a very high skill ceiling, and feature large arrays of unique and fun characters for you to play. If you want to get good at these games you need a good amount of dexterity in your fingers to input the combos and react quickly to your opponent.
MOBAs
League of Legends is perhaps one of the most popular games in competitive fighting, with its best players having reached outside of the E-sports space like Faker, whose name is more known than most. These games require some level of reaction time but are more often about good strategy and split decision making to pull out a win over the other team.
FPSs
First person shooter games like Overwatch, CSGO, Valorant, and many others draw large audiences online. These games require good aim with a mouse and quick thinking in stressful situations, but do ultimately require strategy and smarts to become successful at.
There are many more types of games than these, but these are the larger ones that exist. There are also CCGs (Collectible card games) like Hearthstone, or RTSs (Real time strategy games) like Starcraft. The idea is, there are a lot of options and you just need to choose the one that is best for you.
#2 Find your Community
Competitive gaming revolves around community more than you might think. Many of these games have teams and large followings around certain personalities which create the culture that has come to be. From lurking on gaming forums online to making friends with real people in the space, engaging with the community is another very good way to get a foothold in the space.
If the game that you play has teams, community is more important than ever because a good team works very well together. This requires them to be friends, or at least know each other enough to collaborate effectively.
#3 Practice.
This is the same for every skill, but it rings especially true here: Practice, practice, practice. All good competitive gamers are straight up incredibly skilled, and the only way to be like them is to practice until you are.
If you search Youtube, you will find extensive guides and tutorials on how to improve your skills. For example, Skill Capped Challenger has many different guides to help you learn and improve your skills.
To get good at gaming to reach a competitive level, you will more than likely need to invest years of practice and hard work into your game of choice. To invest this much time and effort you need to be dedicated to improving your skills and pushing yourself through difficult situations to reach your potential.
And of course, it can’t hurt to invest in better gaming tools if you have the resources to. Better PCs remove the struggle of dealing with lag,poor ping, or a whole array of issues that plague gamers everywhere. It’s not ultimately necessary but on a path to becoming as good as you can, it can only help.
Remember that if you want to work towards becoming a professional competitive gamer, you need to balance your lifestyle. Don’t invest hundreds of hours in practice and forget to eat or sleep or manage your relationships! You still have a life to live, don’t ignore it. Be patient. You can be great, you just need to go out and get it.
If you’re a dedicated gamer, there is an energy drink alternative that you may want to look into, since it was designed with games in mind. And if you need some help with staying focused while gaming, here are some excellent tips to help you maximize your focus.
