Defining Skill

--- Disclaimer ---
This article is part of a much larger series designed to explain how to twink the DV way.  This is designed to show what skill is rather than go into details on how to improve each section--which is another article entirely.  However, the information is abstract enough to work as a resource for the game development side of this blog.  Finally, the 'rant' at the end will not be included in the final form of this article.
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1. Intro

2. Mechanics

3. Knowledge

4. Decision Making

5. Experience

6. Conclusion

A.WoW Rant

1. Intro:

There are many examples of skilled players in games—such as Bobby Fisher, Lee Young Ho, and TimTebow—but how can you tell if someone is skilled? Skill means: the ability, coming from one's knowledge, practice, aptitude, etc., to do something well. Doing something 'well' is not very specific. How well? Ordinal skill is what we are really interested in. Ordinal skill lets us know who is better—it ranks players. Ranking player skill in video games is possible, but it requires a specific vocabulary. The skilled player performs better—ranks higher—than opponents because the skilled player has a stronger combination of mechanics, knowledge, decision making, and experience.

2. Mechanics:

Mechanics is the physical interaction between player and game, and is a key component in overall player skill. For video games this interaction is done through components such as keyboards, mice, and monitors, but it also includes emotional events. With keyboards this means pressing exactly the button that represents your thought—without converting that thought from ability to key—it should be instantaneous. Control of the mouse needs to be exact. It should move immediately and exactly to where you intend, over shooting or under shooting the target means there is room for improvement. A player's view of the game world is bound within the monitor. The entire monitor needs to be swept for any important information. But those components are just the external components, emotional control is also important. The main problem with emotion is that it can and will affect a player's ability to perform. Emotional events are highly individual but the player should be aware of how they are being affected. At least a minimal skill level in mechanics is required in order to be skilled at video games. Skilled performance starts with mechanics, and most players would gain a great deal by practicing them.

3. Knowledge:

Knowledge represents the player's understanding of the game, without knowledge both decisions and experience are worthless. A skilled player should know all of the abilities and strategies an opponent can use against them, but must also thoroughly know themselves. Decisions cannot help a player advance if they don't know why an outcome happened, or worse—the player will attribute the wrong cause to the result. This area is almost entirely academic; either the player took the time to learn about all available tools in the game, or they simply resigned to ignorance. The level of knowledge a player has of the game is directly related to their desire to know, and to a lesser extent, their desire to be skilled at the game. Once the player has made the choice to know the game, they are free to focus on the last two components: decisions and experience.

4. Decision Making:

Decision making is the application of mechanics and knowledge to accomplish the player's goals. Decisions occur at three times: past, present, and future. While the time frames are important for improving, their use is beyond the scope of this definitional article. However, this is the first direct way that skill is observable, except for one particularly large caveat—the reason for the player's decision is unknown. People play games for a vast range of reasons and it would be presumptuous to believe that a particular player's reasons are known. However, most players will play the game according to the rules or objectives. Because of this, one can form an impression of their skill level. Decision making can provide the information for forming a judgment about a player's skill, but actually forming that judgment requires experience.

5. Experience:

Experience involves actually performing and making personal judgments. Even the worst decisions will still improve player performance if they take the time to learn from it. Learning requires a judgment on the outcome, and a theory on why it occurred. The judgment can be simple, such as answer to the following question: did the action improve the outcome of the game? The theory on any bad outcome should be focused on the player. The player can only controls their own actions, blaming outside sources will only lead to emotional problems at the mechanics level. The mind must structurally change through long term potentiation(LTP), which can only be done with time. In other words, hard work and dedication with bring about the changes necessary to make experience meaningful and to improve skill.

6. Conclusion:

Skilled players have a strong combination of mechanics, knowledge, decision making, and experience—they use this skill to express their will within any game. Mechanics are a foundation skill. Knowledge is a necessary input for making reasoned decisions. Decision making is necessary to developing experience, and experience is necessary for improvement. Experienced players can attempt to determine the skill level of other player by observing their decisions. But the experienced player must accept that they cannot know why the other player made a decision. Furthermore, ordinal ranking can only really be accomplished by experienced players. Rankings are only meaningful when its balanced as much as possible, but skilled players are noticeable even in imbalanced situations—skilled players are visible in all areas of life. The same individuals that have high performance in games also have high performance in life. The ability to acknowledge ones own failures and grow, and to diligently work towards a goal, should never be underestimated. Hard work and dedication beats natural ability. The abilities a person gains, by attempting to improve themselves, can carry to every aspect of their lives. Skilled players are problem solvers, but they had to start somewhere. Skilled players wanted to be skilled, and anyone who is willing to work hard will always achieve their goals.

A. WoW Rant:

There are few important points concerning WoW that stem from this vocabulary. Players who haven't spent time playing arenas are not even qualified to judge players that have arena experience. Players who cannot consistently carry a pathetically outmatched pug team to victory are not qualified to judge players that can. Furthermore, public judgments reduce the quality of communication and engenders resentment. Perhaps the newer players are difficult to work with, but chances are good that they have difficulty with the emotional component of mechanics—although that weakness often affects both experienced and inexperienced players. Additionally, skilled players put up with far more frustration in witnessing game play than less experienced players, because of the vast experience difference. What seems like only small errors to an inexperienced player is just one of many glaring mistakes an experienced player sees. Experienced players should respect their own roles as 'elders' in the community—a community which is really just an small subset of the real world anyways. Inexperienced players should recognize their own weakness and lose the presumptuous attitude—its a bad place to start and it only get worse once they are actually skilled.