Introduction
Everyone’s drive for gaming is different. You might be a casual gamer who enjoys the occasional Mario Kart or you might be a hardcore gamer who’s dedicated to honing your craft in League of Legends; on the best value gaming laptop no less. Regardless of what your gaming motivation is, if you’ve always wanted to level up your gaming skills, here are five useful and practical tips that you can apply to yourself straight away without getting too technical.

Game Genre
In an ideal world, every gamer wishes to excel at all sorts of game genres out there. However, in reality, most gamers would probably only truly excel at one or two genres of games. This is because different mechanics apply across different genres. One style of gameplay isn’t necessarily cross-applicable from one genre to the next. Therefore, unless you’re not intending on becoming serious or professional, focusing your interest in specific genres would be more fruitful and advantageous. After all, why be the ‘jack of all trades, but master of none’? In my opinion, that would be a waste of your full potential in polishing and mastering your personal gaming style.

Game Choice
Thus, the game genre ties in nicely with your choice of games. If you’re not interested in the game you’re playing, you’re less inclined to invest a considerable amount of time and effort into it. Success doesn’t come without hard work. Before you decide on which game to specialize in, there a few factors to consider such as enjoyment value and long term goals.

How much do you enjoy this game? If you’re going to commit to it, you should be fairly passionate about it in order to sustain your interest in it in the long run. Naturally, this leads to the next consideration of what your long term goals would be. Are they to simply impress your peers or because you want to go pro and start a career out of it? There are a multitude of routes and outcomes that you can gain from the world of gaming but at the crux of the matter, the core of gaming stays the same: your love for the game that kickstarted it all.

Therefore, it might be wise for you to test the waters across different games (even within the same genre) to see which game is thoroughly your cup of tea.

Improving Over Time
After finalizing your niche game, you can then proceed to slowly improve your aptitude in it. Given our fast-moving, almost instantaneous digital age, a problem that many digital consumers face nowadays is the practice of patience and hard work. Everyone’s constantly looking for the easiest way or the quickest fix to get their desired results but they fail to realize that success doesn’t come overnight. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour. Hence, apply this same principle to your gaming approach. Be patient with yourself and purposefully dedicate chunks of time out of your day to practice your game. If you treat gaming as a skill, then slowly work at your craft like an artisan.



On top of spending time playing games, you should also play it with intention. It’s so easy to spend hours mindlessly gaming away. However, it’s arguably much harder to consistently seek new methods and strategies to efficiently improve your response mechanics or to “one-up” your opponents in competitive gameplay since that involves challenging other human minds.

With that being said, a word of advice before you begin your gaming sessions would be to create a list (either a physical or mental note) of the areas you want to work on. By having targeted, focused gaming sessions with goals to achieve in mind, your sessions not only become more mentally stimulating and productive, but you’ll also experience more marginal improvements within a shorter span of time.

+1 Point to Dexterity
Much like your in-game character skill or stat upgrade, why not apply that same concept to yourself? A more in-tuned mind will not only lead to better strategizing capabilities but also sharper response times during intense, fast-paced rounds. Like any other muscle in our bodies, our brain requires consistent training in order to improve mental dexterity in a particular brain function. Therefore, don’t get lazy or complacent when it comes to drilling or grinding your practice sessions.

Apart from improving mental dexterity in-game, here are some practical methods outside of gaming that can help boost it. Avoid mindless activities such as over-indulging on Youtube or TV, scrolling through social media, or surfing the internet for nothing in particular. Instead, you can replace those mentally dull activities with more mentally stimulating alternatives such as reading novels, solving puzzles like sudokus or riddles, or even learning a new instrument.

Additionally, you can also improve your physical dexterity by practicing your finger reflexes. Studies have shown that the fast pace and quick responses elicited from gamers in action video games such as FPS have helped their reflexes immensely. Even if action games aren’t exactly up your alley, having rapid response times can still be useful/helpful in any sort of game. It’s a highly versatile and valuable skill set to possess. Keep gaming religiously to develop stronger muscle memory in using a specific keyboard or console (depending on your platform choice) or outside of gaming, engaging in a little sports every now and then is always good.

Plan Your Way to Victory
Last but not least, you can literally plan your gameplay by studying strategies through reading strategy guides or watching commentary of others playing online to better inform yourself of the relevant tactics present within your gaming community. In order to gain an advantage over your opponent, you need to first understand them well.

Learn the common tactics used by many players across the board and thereafter learn how to override and counter them accordingly. While everyone’s gameplay style is unique to themselves, there are unavoidable similarities between them. Hence, processing the nuances behind each tool and ability can invariably give you the upper hand when it comes to challenging another competitor. Moreover, you should also build the habit of recording your practice and competitive sessions in order to watch back the play sessions and see the points where you excelled or failed in those rounds. Feedback and self-reflection are essential to improving yourself.



Closing Thoughts
By this point, there is an oversaturation of articles or listicles suggesting and recommending to you the best, state-of-the-art gaming gear on the market to help you improve your gaming abilities. Conversely, there is a disproportionate number of sources offering more practical and instantly applicable advice such as this one. We hope that our tips and tricks offered here serve useful in your journey to becoming the gamer you’ve always aspired to be.