To master an art or skill, one must practice for 10,000 hours, according to my Wing Chun instructors. Some gamers are surprised to discover they’ve invested over 100 in an online shooter, so perhaps time passes quickly for us. Here’s the thing: the martial arts instructors I’ve trained under have widely accepted the 10,000 hour rule, even though they themselves have not tracked their progress that way. But they have another saying: “I fear the man who has practiced one move 10,000 times more than the man who knows 10,000 moves.” Does the same rule apply to people who are good at video games?
Since I’ve began consuming articles and videos about games, I’ve read comments calling into question a content creator’s ability to play video games. Usually if there’s some disagreement in an article, this is used as a dismissive tactic. Without video, there’s no real way to tell a writer’s capabilities, unless it’s obvious they’re reviewing a game that is, admittedly, in a genre not part of their repertoire. YouTubers face the same criticisms as journalists, but they put themselves out there with their videos–a medium that can be deceptive because you can’t replicate how a game feels to control while constantly making relevant commentary. Granted, most YouTubers don’t need to be good at video games because they’re just trying to be as entertaining for the audience as possible, unless they focus on one game or franchise like Call of Duty. These YouTubers remind me a lot of the eSports players who join teams for a specific game and work their hardest to beat the other team and make some money.
But for me it poses a question: what does it mean to be good at video games? Does it require the same 10,000 hours to master a video game as it would to master a heel kick or a musical instrument?
I don’t think the journalists or the YouTubers who spend their time blowing through game after game to provide relevant content think they’re that good at games. They’re essentially cooks. A cook might not nail a new dish after the first try, and they’re free to add to it their own ingredients once they feel comfortable, as long as they’re open to making new mistakes in the process. However, they also have the more foundational skills, such as how to chop vegetables, down. A gamer, on the other hand, may play lots of games, and may die over and over again before they can complete a level, but once they complete the game and move onto the next, they’re likely to be able pick up the controls faster. This is the level of skill the general press and YouTubers possess. I suspect that an eSports player will focus their energy on being better at one game than most while building the same hand-eye coordination skills (albeit at a different pace). Would that affect their ability to play other games? I have no idea.
I don’t even think it’s required to invest 10,000 hours to become proficient at a specific video game, let alone the medium. At the same time, I don’t think there’s a black and white definition to being good a video games. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and if the save file containing each of our logged hours is anything to go by, it’s very possible we’ve invested the required time to get a feel for the controls at this point-it’s second nature to us.
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