Heart: the ability of a gamer to exert their personality and/or will on a game.
Body and mind are things that can be taught and practiced, but heart is trickier. Heart can refer to many things: a player’s will to win or will to improve, a player’s ability to take over a game, or even a player’s ability to anticipate what their opponent will do. Training the heart is the most difficult aspect of a gamer to develop, since there’s not exactly a drill you can run to make someone’s will stronger. The only way to make one’s heart stronger is to constantly test yourself and learn from your mistakes.
First, let’s go over some basics of heart. Heart is personal expression in-game, meaning that no two gamers will play a game the same way. Even if you build your playstyle by copying what other people do, the fact that you’re combining different ingredients into a new final product means you’ll be creating a style that’s unique to you. That’s not to say there’s no wrong way to play the game, because there are times where you make all the wrong choices, but having those moments is important to your growth.
For example: in fighting games, two players can main the same character but have completely different playstyles based on player strengths and attitude.
Generally, major play style differences can be boiled down to offensive or aggressive strategies: attacking your opponents and forcing them to respond; and defensive or passive strategies, where you look for an opening in your opponent’s actions and exploit that without putting yourself at risk. Neither play style is stronger than the other in a vacuum, though sometimes in-game factors like the META can make one of these more favorable than the other. In fact, top-level players know when to change their style up depending on the context, seamlessly flowing from one to the other. Don’t try to brute-force something if it isn’t working and you don’t have a plan to make it work.
When you’re playing against other humans, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Firstly, who has momentum? Momentum can be described as when a player is in control of a game, making more decisions, and gaining more advantages than their opponent. Momentum can sometimes swing wildly back-and-forth between players, but great players will do their best to hold onto momentum when they have it and claw away at their opponents’ control of the game when they don’t. To do that, players make reads, or educated, anticipated guesses of what your opponent will do and how to react accordingly, with the goal of playing one or two steps ahead of the competition.
When you’re playing around controlling momentum, part of your game has to come from threat vs action. If you can threaten to do something, and your opponent knows you can do that “something,” you don’t want to throw that “something” out without good reason. After all, the threat of you doing something and punishing your opponent can force your opponent into playing differently, and all you have to do is be present in the game.
This works in the opposite direction as well. If your opponent is threatening you, don’t respond until it is absolutely crucial to do so. Don’t expend resources without making your opponent commit resources as well. If you’re confident in your/your team’s mechanics, look for small windows in opponents’ aggression to push back. Even if it doesn’t work the way you want it to, the fact that you’ve shown a willingness to push back will make your opponents think twice in the future.
Sometimes, when you are controlling the game efficiently, you will frustrate your opponent into playing poorly. In gaming, this is known as tilt. Tilt is a state of mental or emotional confusion or frustration in which a player adopts a sub-optimal strategy, usually resulting in the player taking unnecessary or unwise risks. Tilt is a crucial part of player vs player competition, whether it comes from player manipulation, or making a player do something you want them to/they don’t want to do, player skill expression, or using your in-game skills to force your opponent into an unfavorable position, or just simple bad luck. Great players are good at getting their opponents “on tilt,” and can recognize when they themselves are on tilt in order to get over it and get back in the game.
All of this comes down to your awareness, which means “knowledge or perception of a situation or fact.” Awareness is influenced by the strength of your mind, but you can only truly act on it with your heart. As your knowledge of a game increases, and as you mature as a player, so too will your awareness grow.
Players with poor awareness are easier to manipulate, whereas players with strong awareness are difficult to fool. You should never assume your opponents have strong or weak awareness levels right off the bat. Instead, assume they are as aware of the game as you are, and let your opponents prove you wrong. Underestimating or overestimating an opponent is a mistake that a lot of gamers tend to make, and it can be costly if you’re not careful. Remember, the great players are great because they consistently put themselves in positions to be great.
Now, let’s talk about practicing and strengthening the heart. Since heart deals with emotions, it can be tricky to make it stronger consistently. Oftentimes, you can find yourself playing a game out and you won’t feel anything. Other times, you will be so frustrated that you can’t take anything positive away. In these times, the best way to get over what you’re feeling is to remember this: It’s just a game. Not that your gaming doesn’t matter, but you are not defined by just one game.
Great gamers are able to let individual losses fade away after taking whatever lessons they can from them, and they don’t get caught up in the emotional down of losing. After all, as put by legendary college basketball coach John Callipari: “A successful person never loses… they either win or learn!”
After matches, try to do what is known as a mental reset in which you clear your mind and get to a neutral position, letting the emotions of the previous game wash away. The overall point of competitive gaming is not to win, but to improve. If your sole goal is to win, you will limit yourself and make yourself susceptible to emotional torment. Instead, if your primary objective in gaming is improvement, you will find that wins and growth will come on their own.
Write down a time where you excelled at your game. Talk about what went into that moment, how you executed it, and how you felt. Then, write down a time where you felt frustrated at your game. Write about how you got over that frustration (if you did) and what lessons you learned from those experiences (if any).
Heart - The ability of a gamer to exert their personality and/or will on a game.
Main - The character, or position, someone plays the most of or the best on.
Momentum - When a player or team is in control of a game, making more decisions, and gaining more advantages than their opponent.
Reads - Educated, anticipated guesses of what your opponent will do, and how to react accordingly, with the goal of playing one or two steps ahead of the competition.
Tilt - A state of mental or emotional confusion or frustration in which a player adopts a sub-optimal strategy, usually resulting in the player taking unnecessary or unwise risks.
Player Manipulation - Making or luring an opponent/opponents into doing something you want them to do or something that they don’t want to do. Player Manipulation relies on something called conditioning, where you get your opponent to recognize a pattern you create that you will then disrupt to take advantage of.
Player Skill Expression - When a gamer uses their in-game skills to force their opponent into an unfavorable position or put themselves into a winning position. Player Skill Expression is often taking place in flashy moments and highlights.
Awareness - Knowledge or perception of a situation or fact.
Mental Reset - A strategy in which a competitor clears their mind and returns to a neutral mental state, regardless of any tilt or frustration they were experiencing before.