Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, and Snap Judgement Training — Play More Competitive Video Games!
By: Dimas, Noto, Andaru Kusumo
Tags: Gaming, Snap Judgement, Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, Video Games

Photo by Jason Strull on Unsplash

I tell you what, this is something that people often overlook and people tend to think that playing games are bad, turns out that there a lot of things that you guys overlook. Some of the great value in work like Critical Thinking, Creative Thinking, and Snap Judgement is actually can be trained when you are playing a competitive game.

Look bear with me on this one, Competitive games are a perfect place to nurture those skills because it was unconsciously designed like that. People always thought that competitive games win by the person that actually good at it. The criteria of being good often translated by most of the Esport team in Indonesia as “Mechanically Good” means that this person knows how to play a certain role with several heroes and He/She actually good using it. Well, that’s not wrong, but they also overlooked that the team that wins is not the one that good, but most of the time because they can do certain objectives very efficiently.

Playing games competitively is always about objectives, what is our next objective, and how we secure it. No matter what game are you playing like DOTA2, League of Legends, PUBG, Mobile Legends, Free Fire, or even Monster Hunter: Worlds, is all about objectives. The question that you need to ask yourself is, How do you finish your objective quickly then move on to the next objective?

“Mechanically Gifted” vs “Creative Thinking”

So which one is better, Mechanically Gifted person but stupid or Not-too-good Mechanically but actually creative? Most of the time esport coaches say the first one is better than the other one. Competitive Games are basically hard to master, which if they can find a person that a mechanically gifted person they can mold them into a great player. People with Not-too-good mechanically but creative often overlooked and sometimes can be your winning ticket.

So what the hell I mean by that? I give you an example. So for the past 3 days, I’ve been pondering around and mostly feeling like shit with Monster Hunters: World. There’s this big dragon called Alatreon which seems that I can’t seem to kill it solo. Because I am competitive and I wanna kill this chonky dragon solo, I searched how to kill it in the most efficient ways, and came up with two videos. One with Switch Axe and Heavy Bow Gun.

To beat Alatreon unscathed, you have to punch your elemental damage in contrast to what element Alatreon has; if It has ice, you have to punch it with fire and vice versa before his ult kills everyone in the arena. This one guy kills it with a switch axe which IMO one of the hardest weapons in the game.

And this guy creatively thinks that if “I can punch enough raw damage Alatreon I might kill it before his ult”.

Both work and kill the damn dragon within 10 mins, now let me ask you a question, what is the objective? There are 2 objectives to kill this dragon, first pump your elemental damage and break his head twice. The first video shows how to complete it all, while the second one creatively says that those 2 objectives are irrelevant because as long as I can punch enough raw damage, this dragon is dead anyway. This is what we call “Cheese Strats”, a strategy out of the box that works well to an off-guard opponent.

By playing competitive games your mind is constantly evolving thinking about how the hell to complete the objectives efficiently. For example, playing League of Legends you played as a jungle, you usually do route a securing red and blue buffs and farm the jungle along the way. There will be times that you said that “ oh you know what, let's do route b, securing red, gank top and if lucky I still get blue buffs”, by doing so you already train your critical thinking. There is no right way to win competitive games ( a lot of wrong ways to win though), but it depends on how you complete your objective efficiently. Then what? You will start training route b and found yourself your own “unique route”. Iteratively playing and applying your theory will create the uniqueness of your strategy which came from your critical thinking in the first place, voila you unconsciously train to think critically while playing games.

The last one is snap judgment, a skill that people deemed that is not too important, but it is a very powerful skill to have. I read Malcolm Gladwell’s book about snap judgment and all I can say that Playing competitive games can help you nurture your Snap Judgement Skills. For me, snap judgment in-game are a priority objective. Sometimes when you playing games there are stacked objectives that needed to be done but you can clear them one by one because it's a fast-paced game and you need to decide quickly, which one I need to clear first. For example, you as DOTA 2 support on a winning lane, noticing on your maps that the enemy safe lane is empty and you can't decide where the hell their location. There are 2 objectives here as DOTA2 support; find out where the hell they are while keeping everybody safe farming. Let's say you do finding out the enemy first and because your lane is winning already, there is no point babysitting your carry anymore. You are on the way to enemy jungle warding when suddenly you see enemy support on the river presumably going mid, what will you do? let me be clear here the enemy support is presumably going mid not definitely. For me, this is my wake up call that my mid lane may be in imminent danger, so I will teleport mid to safeguard my midlaner and warn him that the gank are coming. In this situation, there is no right or wrong, but only it may be right. Maybe the enemy support is not ganking mid and I just wasted 5 mins of my time doing nothing and risking my safelaner to be ganked, or the mid actually in danger and I just save his ass and 5 mins worth of time for him to farm more items.

I have been playing games for 22 years since my first console Playstation was brought to my home when I was 3 and I love every second I played it. Grown-up but not so wiser me tasted what it feels like working in Esport environment and fell in love with it, the nerdy part of me read too many books and the critical part of me pinpoints what I love and what I read. I am no expert of this, but i can say that playing games subconsciously help you train those traits that you need in an office environment.