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Years of experience supporting elite-level esports performers has taught us this important lesson…players don’t always make the right decisions.
Have you ever made a questionable decision or regretted a choice while gaming? career?Often, our brains are not the reliable ally we believe them to be.? We all make mistakes in our decisions, whether it’s ignoring the advice of our coaches and deciding to lose the game. decision making. Despite our best intentions, we can make decisions that negatively impact our performance and development. You are not alone; many of us share these experiences. In this post, we explore how our minds lead us to make bad decisions, especially in the context of esports.
Understand how we make decisions
When making decisions, our brains use two systems. The first is to go slowly and carefully, weighing all the information and making the best possible choice. This process is mentally demanding and requires effort to collect, organize, and analyze data before making a decision.
This method is so taxing that our brains often default to the second system. It’s faster, more automatic, and uses shortcuts to quickly arrive at well-suited decisions. Although this system is efficient, it can lead to many “hmm” moments in decision-making. Here are some of the biases in our minds that influence this system and lead to these decisions. This is outlined by famous psychologist Daniel Kahneman (and Amos Tversky) in Kahneman’s book. You can think fast or slow.
confirmation bias
Disagreements between players are common, and I have had the privilege of witnessing many of them during my career in esports psychology. Common sentiments include: “Everything I’m saying is right, everything you’re saying is wrong,” and this leads to the decision to continue arguing and fighting with other players. There are fundamental reasons why this scenario continues and we have decided to stick with our version of events. The reason for this is known as: confirmation bias. We tend to focus and focus on information that confirms our beliefs. Therefore, when we make decisions, we base them on information that supports our existing beliefs. In this example, it means that players are likely to only incorporate information that supports their claims and completely ignore information that contradicts it. Then, we decide to continue the discussion without incorporating other perspectives or relevant information.
For example, you may think that training must be rigorous and serious, with no room for fun. If your coach suggests that the training element should be fun and reinforced. creativityyou may ignore this and only remember details that reinforce your initial belief that rigorous, structured practice is the only path to elite skill.
self-centered bias
How you see yourself as a competitor depends on how others see you. You may rely more on your own perspective than on the perspective of others when making decisions. this is called self-centered bias. In esports, you may see teammates deciding to play to benefit themselves rather than the team. If you ask them why they did something like that, they may only give reasons related to what they can see or how they view the game. The problem is obvious. They did not consider the needs and perspectives of their teammates in their decision-making.
For example, games like VALORANT, LoL (League of Legends), and CS2 (Counter-Strike 2) rely on more than just individual ability. Your ability to coordinate with your teammates will take you from good to great. People with egocentric biases may find it difficult to make decisions that take into account the perspectives of others. The result is more selfish gameplay that detracts from the team’s purpose.
concentration illusion
Have you ever played a game where you forget everything around you and are stuck in a small part of the screen, similar to tunnel vision? Now, when making a decision, imagine: We can become narrow-minded and fixate on one small piece of information instead of seeing the big picture. I call this making decisions with blinders on (those things racehorses wear over their eyes to block their peripheral vision).
this concentration illusion It’s when you try to predict the future based on a single piece of information. The problem with this is that your future outlook becomes less accurate and you end up making decisions based on very limited information. example competition When you’re watching potential opponents play competitive matches, use FIFA. You see they scored an incredible goal and won the match, even though they performed very poorly throughout the match. This bias means that we used information from that one glorious goal rather than information from the entire match to predict how good our opponent would be. This allows you to make changes to your gameplay to compensate for your elevated perspective on the opponents you’re about to face. It leads to overly complicated and unhelpful gameplay against not-so-skilled opponents, and ultimately makes the match more difficult than it needs to be.
What can we learn?
- The brain likes to save energy by taking shortcuts.
- If you’re not careful, these shortcuts can lead to poor and questionable decisions.
- Be careful when it happens cutting Make decisions based on important, relevant information.
Being aware of these cognitive biases and understanding how the mind works can help you make better decisions and perform better in esports. Remember that awareness is the first step to mastering your mind and the game.
