Let’s be real here, reader: I know you wish you were better at video games. No matter how nonchalant you appear, no matter how often you type “it’s just a game bro” in all chat, you have to admit that it would be nice to be better at video games. There’s nothing wrong with that. Everyone in the world wants to be better at video games.

Unfortunately, getting better at games is easier said than done. If you are actively looking to sharpen up your skills, it’s important to work smarter and not harder. Lucky for you, we’ve been working hard in the Alienware Pro Lab to unearth the most important research finding of all: how you — yes, you — can get better at video games. 

We’ve discovered some interesting stuff about how the brain functions differently when it comes to different kinds of games. A deeper understanding of how your cognitive profile might shape and be shaped by your video games of choice may help you on your journey to improvement — and you might even find that the skills you acquire from video games help you in other areas of your life, too.

Not all reaction time is created equal

When you think about how reaction time functions in a game, you probably think of something like a tactical FPS player reacting at a moment’s notice to shoot an enemy in the head. It stands to reason that in games where milliseconds can often determine the outcome of an individual round, having good reaction time is more important than in a game where you have to take macro strategy into equal account, right?

Actually, it turns out that there’s a little more to it than that. Through the Alienware Pro Lab, we ran trials with both FPS and MOBA players that tested not just how fast their reaction time was, but also how accurate it was, and how that speed changed given different stimuli.

As always, when looking at our findings, please keep in mind that we were surveying professional-level players. This means that the margins were actually relatively small, compared to the variance you’d find among the wider playerbase, and even the “worse” results are well above average.

You might expect MOBA players to lag behind in terms of raw reaction time. In reality, FPS and MOBA players not only had comparable results in this regard, but some MOBA players even inched ahead of their FPS counterparts. This is because despite the slower, more macro-oriented nature of their genre, MOBA players do still need to be able to react and adjust to new situations as well in order to be successful. They may not have to be “on” all the time, like FPS players do, but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s not a factor at all.

The real difference lies in the nature of each player’s reactions. As an example, one of the tests we ran would have five arrows appear on the screen, and the player would have to indicate whether the arrow in the middle was pointing left or right. Sometimes, all five arrows would be pointing in the same direction; other times, the middle arrow would be different to the other four. 

This trial, and others like it, revealed both reaction time and accuracy. Though the speeds of the responses themselves were about equivalent, we found that FPS players had more accurate responses and consistent reaction time overall. MOBA players tended to favor speed over accuracy, and performed worse than FPS players in almost all accuracy categories. When it came to speed versus accuracy, FPS players were fairly balanced, but tilted towards accuracy.

This all makes sense considering MOBA players are clicking around constantly, which means any mistakes they make can be adjusted on the fly, whereas each click matters immensely for FPS players. In a MOBA, there’s less penalty for individual mistakes, since a full game is more of a marathon than a sprint. In an FPS, however, mistakes are much more costly given the round-by-round format.

There’s even more to glean from these results, however. Within these tests, there was also an added factor of “cuing.” To illustrate what this means, let’s take the ‘five arrows’ example from before. To begin with, the arrows would flash on the screen with no warning. However, as the test went on, some of the arrows would be preceded by a visual cue, indicating that the arrows were about to come up and thereby allowing the player to mentally prepare.

When the arrows were cued, FPS and MOBA players performed similarly in reaction time. The uncued arrows, however, revealed a notable difference — FPS players were by and large much better at responding without a cue. This is likely because in FPS games, enemies can appear out of nowhere, and responding quickly to that kind of thing can be crucial. Even though cues are helpful, FPS players have to be aware of all possibilities at all times and have more incentive to respond to unprompted situations. MOBA players, on the other hand, are more incentivized to respond to cues. Not only does the genre require a more holistic view of the game at any given time, but MOBAs by and large just have a wider variety of things to respond to than FPSes do — just think of how things like abilities and item usage are communicated via audio and visual cues.

The art of letting go

So, we’ve covered how there’s actually a lot more to the basic idea of “reaction time” than one might think. But this on its own doesn’t paint the full picture of what’s going on in an esports athlete’s head when they’re in a high-pressure game, nor does it even really correlate with their performance.

Let’s look at the “cued” tests again. Sometimes, the cue that preceded the actual test would appear in a different part of the screen. For example, the cue might appear in the bottom third, but the arrows themselves would appear in the top third. This was known as a “wrong cue trial,” with the intended purpose being to reveal how good players were at both reconfiguring their expectations and letting go of being deliberately “tricked” by the test.

FPS players once again inched ahead here. The round-by-round format of tactical FPS games in particular means that being able to let go of what happened in a previous round is extremely important for a pro player. Other than carried-over gear and abilities, individual rounds in tactical shooters essentially don’t have any bearing on each other. Even if you or a teammate completely botch a round, you have to be able to shake it off and return to form as quickly as possible in the next. Since FPS players have to treat every round as a completely different ‘game,’ they were better on the whole at recovering from readjustments and letting go of mistakes.

Within the FPS players tested, however, there was a notable split between male players and female players. We found that female players had comparable reaction times when it came to wrong cues, but they had lower accuracy, and a more difficult time recovering from and letting go of mistakes.

There are a number of reasons why this might be the case. Chief among them is the external factor of sexism and toxicity in gaming, which many female FPS players — especially those who are trying to go pro or have already gone pro — have to contend with at some point in their careers. Gaming certainly doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and being subjected to verbal abuse can have an emotional and psychological impact that persists across different rounds, no matter how good you might otherwise be at letting go of in-game mistakes.

Thus, female players may have developed a higher sensitivity to and awareness of their own mistakes, since that’s the sort of thing they might be scrutinized for due to their gender. We should note that this is mostly speculative, since it’s difficult to verify or confirm, but there is some evidence that anxious individuals show impaired ability to disengage attention from threatening stimuli. Whilst making a mistake isn’t exactly a “threat”, this is the most likely explanation for why there was such a strong gender divide in the results.

Can getting better at gaming make you better at other stuff too?

Short answer: yes!

Long answer: as we’ve discussed in this article, different games tend to shape different cognitive profiles. For example, FPS players tend to be good at flicking between extremes, since they have moments of intense activity followed by lulls, whereas MOBA players tend to be more consistent.

So, naturally, the cognitive skills that you develop through gaming can actually help you in other aspects of your life. Gaming has already permeated other industries in new and unexpected ways — just recently, surgeons were able to perform a procedure remotely, using a video game controller, and in 2012 a study was released that showed playing World of Warcraft boosted the cognitive function of older adults — but you can be aware of its impact in your day to day life, too. It’s been proven that gaming helps to improve cognitive function, including things like memory and information retention.

Certain occupations also benefit from the cognitive function honed by gaming. Our Pro Lab tests were designed to simulate mental stress on the brain, with one key aspect being how good someone is at making accurate decisions under pressure. This is a skill that could easily be applied to high-stress occupations where a similar level of quick thinking under pressure is required. Reaction time with high accuracy also lends itself to physical pursuits like basketball — so if you’ve ever wondered why Luka Doncic is so into Overwatch, maybe it’s because it really sharpens his focus. (Maybe he needed to play more Overwatch during the NBA Finals. Or maybe less. The findings are unclear on this.)

All this to say: can understanding how the games you play shape your cognitive function help you get better at said games? The answer is yes, if you know what areas you’re already excelling at, and which areas you could keep focusing on in order to thrive in any given genre. A lot of what we’ve covered here is going on just below the surface. All it takes is making a conscious effort to better understand them.

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