Video games are a fun activities that many people enjoy to do in their free time. Video games can help reduce stress or take your mind off something else like school, but when first starting out, video games can be difficult to learn and hard to play. Numerous buttons on the controller that make your character do different things in game, along with the quick hand-eye coordination that is required to be good at certain games, were two things that I really had a problem with picking up.
The problem of not knowing what each one of the buttons on my controller did while playing a game was a huge problem. Without knowing what these buttons did, I wouldn’t know how to control my character throughout the course of a game. To solve this I would simply look at the instruction manual of the game to figure which each individual button did. In no time I was controlling my character and playing the game with ease.
While the problem of knowing what each individual button was relatively easy to solve, improving my hand-eye coordination was not. Hand-eye coordination is pivotal to being able to play video games well, and when I first started playing my coordination was awful. To fix this atrocious coordination, I figured that the only way to improve it was to just keep playing. The old saying “practice makes perfect” really stayed true in this situation. Over time my playing got better and I actually started to have fun.
The practice for video games really payed off, and it is something that I still enjoy to do whether it’s to take my mind off something or to just sit back, relax, and have some fun.
Do you have any other suggestions to help someone learn to play video games? If so, what are they? Do you think these ways of learning would help you too? If not, why?
American Lit Blog 
Max, I have been playing video games for a while too, and faced many of the same problems you did. I was always having to look down t the controller while playing because I did not know what all the buttons did just like how you said. However, I am not sure if hand-eye coordination really plays a part when playing video games. When I think of hand-eye coordination I normally think of playing a sport or doing something other than using technology. Overall, I thought that your blog post was very interesting because I could relate to many of the things you talked about.
LikeLike
Nick,
Thanks for your reply. Now that I think about it, I question whether or not hand-eye coordination is as big of a deal as I first thought. Regardless, your hands play a huge role in how good you are at video games. I hope this helped you improve your video game skills.
LikeLike
Max,
I enjoy playing video games a lot too, although I do not get to play as much as I’d like to because of school and extra circulars. I mostly play sports games and I know first hand that there is rapid improvement from when you first get the game to after you have played for a little while. Within the first couple weeks of having a new game I am able to get in the flow and pick up what’s different about it. After that the progress slows down, but is still there. The game I play most is NBA2K, and I can definitely see myself get better as I play more. I pick up new moves as I get better with the controllers, and I find out what things works well in the game and can give me success. One suggestion I’d like to add for enhancing your gaming skills is watching tutorials online. This can help when you first get a game because you can learn from someone who has already been playing it. It may even benefit you after you become more advanced because you could figure out things from people that play more that you did not know before.
LikeLike
G,
I play NBA 2K a lot also, and I agree with your idea of watching tutorials to improve your play. YouTube is a great place to go to find tutorials. There are many people who play NBA daily, and have good insight and methods to improve your play. Thank you for your response and input on how tutorials help the average player become better.
LikeLike
Max, I too have been playing video games for as long as I can remember from as far back as the Nintendo DS in early elementary school to the PS4 of today. I agree that when using different gaming systems, learning the buttons on the different remotes can be a very painstaking process. However, once a person has the controller setup down, the hardest thing to learn is the gameplay and strategy of each game individual game. When you play different games of different genres, such as sports or shooting games, the mindset you use is very different. In one you are in active combat and are trying to survive while in the other you are engaged against a single other team and you are trying to earn a better score than it does. Once you are able to adjust between mindsets of different games, playing video games is a very fun experience.
LikeLike
Colin,
I could not agree more with your statement. The differences between games like Call of Duty and NBA 2K are huge. Knowing these differences between different games and adapting to them can improve your play tremendously. Video games involve way more than just smashing buttons on a controller. They take skill, commitment, strategy, and probably most of all knowledge of what you are playing. Thank you for your response, it really made me realize how the differences in games play a huge role in someone’s skill.
LikeLike