There was a time when gaming was a PC or console-based activity. But with the rise of mobile technology those days are long gone. So far long gone, in fact, that mobile gaming is now the bigger moneymaker of the two.
It’s not hard to see why as the smartphone and tablet have become more and more part of our lives. The technology has been advancing at an astonishing rate allowing gamers to play when and where they like.

The companies who produce the games have been quick to notice this fact by creating games that are specifically intended to work best on a mobile device and use their specific features too. Game developers know that creating games for mobile involves a lot more than simply making ones that are fun. They have to look fantastic too. An important part of this lies in the standard and quality of the graphics.

This is an incredible technical challenge and it’s not made any easier by the great demands devices now place on the batteries that power them. These can all too often lead to overheating and other, more serious, problems.
But smartphones have been improving with every new generation and they’re now capable of displaying video in full HD. Also the introduction of AMOLED technology has improved color clarity and brightness greatly.

This trend is not likely to stop and in the coming years we’re likely to see more of the same. Although we won’t get smartphones with ray-tracing technology found in the Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X, graphics will continue to get better and in 5 years we’ll be playing mobile games with incredible graphics without a doubt.

What about us?

Here at 3D Aim Trainer we are always looking to re-invent ourselves and follow the newest trends. With mobile gaming becoming such a huge part of the gaming and esports landscape, it’s only logical that we follow suit and make the best mobile aim trainer we can think of. This with great graphics on top of it.

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Gamers who have browsed the comments section of a video game review will be aware of the heated debates that often occur regarding how the title has been rated. Is the judgment fair? Have they reviewed the game in enough depth? Do they seem to give better scores to games that are developed and published by larger companies?

This got us wondering: what are the games that the critics dislike but are much loved by gamers all around the world? And, on the other side of the same coin: which games are much loved by critics but underrated by the rest of the gaming community?

To answer these questions, we first turned to Metacritic, one of the largest review aggregate sites on the internet. We gathered the site’s average critic scores and user scores for over 10,000 different video games and ranked them by the difference between each game’s two scores. This allowed us to find out which games are absolutely underrated by critics yet dearly loved by gamers, and vice versa. We then took this one step further and gathered
the average user review scores of games on Steam, to get a comparative dataset and to see what similarities and differences occurred.

Of course, the use of Metacritic’s data does come with certain caveats. Specifically, the User Scores should be taken with a pinch of salt because anyone can review and score any game – this leaves the system open to abuse from trolls and people with an especially aggressive dislike of specific games and franchises. However, there’s no doubt that the data provides an intriguing snapshot of the differences in perception and enjoyment between critics and average gamers.

Now, read on to learn about the results…

Loved by Gamers, Underrated by Critics – Top Three According to Metacritic

Let’s begin with the top three video games that are much loved by gamers but utterly reviled by critics based on Metacritic’s data. The results may surprise you!

The top game loved by gamers but underrated by critics is the shooter Torrente, a Spanish movie tie-in game from 2004. The critics tended to feel that the game was a low-quality imitation of Grand Theft Auto in some ways, but with inferior combat and a far less interactive open world (resulting in an average critic score of 36 out of 100). However, it seems that many gamers disagree with the negative critical verdict – one user even commented, “much better than GTA San Andreas without any doubt.” Overall, gamers gave the title an average score of 89 out of 100.

Interestingly, the other two games here follow a similar pattern: 2 nd place goes to March of the Penguins, another movie tie-in, and 3 rd goes to Yu Yu Hakusho: Spirit Detective, a manga tie-in. Despite both receiving great average user scores (81 for the former and 80 for the latter), both games have critic scores in the low 30s (34 and 33 respectively).

In the case of Spirit Detective, one critic went so far as to say that “the Japanese anime gets butchered here…”

Loved by Critics, Underrated by Gamers – Top Three According to Metacritic

Next, we’ll look at the other end of the spectrum of Metacritic’s data: the three games that critics loved, but gamers despised…

You may or may not find it surprising that all three of the video games loved by critics but underrated by gamers are massively successful titles. FIFA 20 and NBA 2K20, the games in 2nd and 3rd, are two of the world’s most well-known sports games (for example, according to Guinness World Records the FIFA franchise as a whole had sold over 260 million copies by 2018).

While these two games had critic scores of 79 and 77, their user scores were just 12 and 14.67. In the case of FIFA 20, many of its players have argued that the lack of updates in its Career Mode and Be A Pro Mode (and even its general gameplay) has led to the franchise stagnating in recent years. Maybe this is one of the causes of its poor user reviews.

Meanwhile, 1 st place goes to Warlords of New York, DLC for Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. Released by Ubisoft, one of the world’s largest video game publishers, The Division 2’s release was mixed. While it was the UK’s best selling game the week it came out, Ubisoft later admitted that the game’s sales weren’t as high as they had hoped upon release.

It seems that any goodwill for the Division 2 had dissipated by the time the aforementioned DLC was released. With an average user score of only 7.67 out of 100, the game appeared to have very few fans at this stage, with most people taking a very negative view of it. Of course, the exceptions here are the critics, who gave it a massive average score of 78.33.

Now that we’ve seen the top three, let’s branch out to the top 50 for both categories.

Loved by Players, Underrated by Critics – Metacritic

It’s definitely fair to say that this top 50 is primarily populated by titles that are a little less well-known in some regions around the world (particularly in comparison to the following top 50). Even Pokemon’s single appearance on this list is instigated by Mystery Dungeon, a spin-off of the main series.

There is also a continuation of what we saw in this category’s top three, with many of these games being tie-ins from franchises originating on other mediums like film and television; examples include Shrek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Yu-Gi-Oh! While games like these are often made primarily to raise brand awareness and to capitalize on their movie/TV releases, it seems that many gamers actually rate them as really good games compared to the critics.

Finally, let’s examine the top 50 games that are underrated by gamers but loved by critics.

Loved by Critics, Underrated by Players – Metacritic

Unlike the previous list, this ranking is littered with franchises that are massively popular in the West. For instance, no less than seven of these games are a part of the Call of Duty series, being either full games or DLC. Other iconic gaming franchises that were rated far kindlier by critics than by average gamers include Battlefield, Warcraft, and Pokemon. FIFA also deserves another mention after its appearance in the top three with FIFA 20: a little further down, FIFA 19 sits comfortably in 14th. Similarly, after NBA 2K20’s placement in 3rd, NBA 2K18 and 2K19 took 11th and 12th respectively.

In addition to this, Fortnite’s incredible popularity didn’t stop it from getting into this list, coming in at 49th. After seeing how the results stacked up using Metacritic, we thought it would be worth seeing how the rankings might look using data from another source. We, therefore, took the
time to gather the average user review scores of thousands of games on Steam, then compared them against their average Critic Scores. this allowed us to discover the games that Steam users love but critics don’t, and vice versa.

Loved by Gamers, Underrated by Critics – Steam

Upon seeing the results for this ranking, we quickly noticed that nearly all of Steam’s games in this top 50 differ from Metacritic’s (the only exception is Senran Kagura Reflexions in 2nd place).

We also noted that several controversial games made appearances in this ranking – for instance, 2015’s Hatred, which was condemned by journalists for its extreme wanton violence. Postal, another controversial series, managed to rank highly at various points throughout our study. Two of its titles can be found in this table here (namely Postal Redux in 26th and Postal 2 in 3rd ), while the original Postal reached 74th. In addition, Postal 2 appeared in the top 100 for Metacritic’s Loved by Gamers/Underrated by Critics.

Although some of the franchises found in this list are highly popular (such as Five Nights at Freddy’s and Final Fantasy) many of these games are a little less well-known. This is particularly true when compared to the following ranking…

Loved by Critics, Underrated by Gamers – Steam

Just like our equivalent ranking for Metacritic’s data, many spots in this table are occupied by highly popular franchises – these include NBA 2K, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Battlefield, The Sims, Destiny, and Monster Hunter, to name just a few.

This wasn’t the only similarity between Steam and Metacritic’s respective Loved by Critics/Underrated by Gamers rankings. There were also quite a few reappearances from certain games. Aside from ArcheAge, Artifact, and Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight, it was especially intriguing to see all three NBA 2K games return (2K18, 2K19, and 2K20).

On top of this, we noticed that the Call of Duty series cropped up at various points for both Steam and Metacritic’s Loved by Critics/Underrated by Gamers lists, with three appearances in the former and seven in the latter. Are there any games that you think don’t get enough notice or praise from critics? On the other hand, are there any games that you believe are hugely overrated? Either way, let us know in the comments below.

Methodology

To gather the data for this study, we began with Metacritic. First, we scraped the critic scores (Metascores) and user scores for thousands of titles and averaged the scores of games that appeared on multiple platforms (as games released on more than one platform appear as separate listings).

Because Metacritic’s critic reviews give scores out of 100 while its user reviews give scores out of 10, we multiplied the user scores by 10 to make both ratings comparable. We then ranked every game by the total difference between their two scores.

We then gathered the data from Steam in a similar manner. Each game has an average user review score out of 100 – we scraped these results and then matched them to their Metascores to discover the games with the largest difference in scores from Steam users to critics.

If you’d like to see the full rankings of all the game scores that we gathered from Metacritic and Steam, click here.

Speaking of Best Games at 3D Aim Trainer, we’re happy to have Hyper Scape added to our Mouse Sensitivity Calculator on the aim training platform.

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Before diving into the video game world to explore the most toxic gaming communities, when speaking about video game communities, there was a time when video games were seen as a niche pastime for the few – now gaming is an everyday activity enjoyed by countless people all over the world. With so many people playing games, it has led to the creation of communities and fan bases springing up for individual games. Reddit provides a prime example of this, where the subreddits of larger games like Fortnite, Overwatch, and League of Legends have well over a million members each!

While most gamers are a credit to their respective communities, there is always a small subset that likes to indulge in toxic activity. This can range from derogatory and foul language to trolling and using hacks to gain an unfair advantage over other players.

There are various potential reasons why a player might exhibit toxic behavior. However, generally speaking, it comes down two root causes:

1. The player has a heavy emotional investment in the game and takes it very seriously, leading them to insult or lash out at other players depending on whether the match or game is going well or badly.
2. The player is looking to derive humour from the game by harassing or provoking other players into a reaction.

But which game communities engage in toxic activity the most? We analysed thousands of comments across the subreddits of the world’s most popular games to find out which communities most often engage in this kind of behaviour. We also found out how often people search online regarding toxic activity in each game.

Which video game community do you think will come out on top? Read on to take a look at our discoveries.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds turned out to have the community that exhibits the highest proportion of toxic behaviour. It ranked highly in most of our data points: it had the highest proportion of references to hacking, as well as the 2^nd highest proportion of general toxic behaviour like trolling and being banned. It also had the 2^nd highest proportion of online interest according to the data.

If you are interested in improving your aim in Call of Duty Warzone you’d better know that the 2^nd and 3^rd place in the final rankings belong to COD Warzone and Counter-Strike: GO respectively. In spite of these two being the only games to have an average score above 5 out of 10 (aside from PUBG), Warzone’s average is still over 1.6 points behind 1^st place, while CS: GO’s average is nearly 2.5 points lower – showing just how far ahead of the pack PUBG truly is!

At the other end of the table, Overwatch’s community displays the lowest proportion of toxic activity. Despite having the 8^th highest proportion of searches related to toxic behavior, it has the highest proportion of positive interaction by far, as well as the 4th lowest proportion of references to trolling, cheating, and bans.

Minecraft and FIFA aren’t far away in 2^nd and 3^rd place – Minecraft has the lowest swearing tendency and number of references to general toxic behaviour, while FIFA has the least mentions of hacking.

For a better understanding of how we calculated these scores, take a look at the rest of the study and read through our methodology section at the bottom of the page.

Next, let’s go more in-depth and analyze the rankings of each individual data point…

Game Subreddits with the Highest Proportion of Swear Words

The first factor we looked into was the number of swear words on each game’s subreddit comments versus the total number of comments that we analysed.

The Smash Bros. subreddit has by far the highest proportion of swearing out of all our games – over double that of Call of Duty Warzone in 2^nd place!

At the other end of the ranking, Minecraft’s subreddit had the least proportionate mentions of swearing. It was very closely followed by Roblox’s subreddit, which was only 0.003% behind.

Game Subreddits with the Highest Proportion of Hacking Mentions

Next, we checked out each subreddit’s proportion of references to hacking.

The game with the greatest proportionate mentions of hacking turned out to be PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. This is a fairly understandable result – cheating and hacking activity have been seen in PUBG even back when the game was in early access, and can still be witnessed online to this day. Of course, this isn’t to say that the game’s developers are doing nothing to combat hackers. For instance, in July 2020 anti-cheat technology was added to PUBG Mobile, to discourage cheating and to identify suspicious in-game behaviour.

The bottom of the ranking includes the games FIFA, Super Smash Bros., and League of Legends. This isn’t particularly surprising with regard to both Super Smash Bros. and League of Legends: in the case of the former, any modding of the game usually results in an immediate ban, while the latter has generally seen very few instances of hacking and scripting compared to other games (although it isn’t unheard of).

Game Subreddits with the Highest Proportion of General Toxic Activity

For our next factor, we delved into mentions of other kinds of toxic behavior, such as trolling, griefing, and references to players being banned.

Rocket League’s subreddit was found to have the highest proportion of references to general toxic activity. Despite cheating and hacking being largely unheard of in the game, it seems that, based on our Reddit data, the community makes up for this with a particularly high amount of trolling and general toxic discourse.

Once again, we find Minecraft at the bottom of the ranking. Just like with its low levels of bad language, it seems the Minecraft community doesn’t engage in a huge amount of griefing or trolling either, compared to other communities.

Game Subreddits with the Highest Proportion of Positive Interaction

For our fourth Reddit-focused ranking, we thought it would be worth taking a look at the other side of the coin. We searched for terms related to more positive behavior, including phrases like ‘well played’, ‘congrats’/’congratulations’, ‘gg’ and many others.

Overwatch’s subreddit comfortably takes 1^st place for this data point, with a positive proportion of nearly 15%! The game has done well in many of our rankings, with the 16^th and 18^th lowest proportions of swearing and general toxic activity respectively. Last year the game’s developer Blizzard Entertainment, implemented an endorsement system which they claimed reduced toxicity by 40%.

Meanwhile, it’s an interesting coincidence that Smash Bros., the community previously found to have the greatest tendency for swearing/aggressive language, also has the 2^nd lowest proportion of positive interaction in this data point.

Games with the Most Online Searches for Toxic Activity

For this data point, we looked at the average number of monthly searches for topics like hacking, rage quitting and for players being banned in each game; we then compared each game’s result to its total amount of monthly searches to get an adjusted proportion.

Top of the table for this ranking is Call of Duty Warzone, although PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is only 0.05% behind. Despite only being released in March 2020, Call of Duty Warzone has built up a massive following, thanks in part to the enduring popularity of the Call of Duty franchise and also for creating a Battle Royale game that players can’t get enough of. Considering the sheer size of its fanbase, It’s not a huge surprise that the game has attracted its fair share of toxic players!

Somewhat more surprising (given its high proportion of swearing and low proportion of positive interaction), is the fact that Super Smash Bros. has the lowest proportion of toxic online searches – it seems that, while the game’s players are often foul-mouthed, they don’t tend to take their toxic behavior as far as many other game communities.
Just above Super Smash Bros. is Valorant in 20th. A relatively new game (fully released in June 2020), it’s great to see that Valorant’s rapidly growing community surrounding seems to be exhibiting lower levels of toxic behavior than many other video game communities.

Methodology

Once we had gathered all the data we needed by scraping Reddit and using Google’s Keyword Planner for our individual categories, we normalised our results to give each game a score out of ten for every factor. To do this, we used the following minmax normalisation formula:

Result = (x-min(x))/(max(x)-min(x))

Once we had these scores, we combined them to find each game’s average, allowing us to create a final ranking that showcases which video game communities exhibit the most toxic activity.

Community Toxicity on Other Websites

Of course, there are various other sites and servers besides Reddit where video game communities gather (including their respective subsets of toxic members), with some of the more famous being Twitch, Discord and Steam.

They each have their own ways of dealing with toxic behaviour. In the case of Discord, their community guidelines recommend that you report anyone who posts messages involving the following:

• Harassment
• Spam messages
• Violating IP rights
• Sharing child pornography
• Glorifying or promoting suicide and self-harm
• Distributing viruses
• Threatening another user
• Sharing images of gore or animal cruelty

Users can also block or mute individuals whose content they don’t want to see. In addition, moderators can kick or ban users on their server if they’re breaking any rules or guidelines.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that sites aren’t working at further refining the ways in which they operate. For instance, March 2020 saw Twitch provide more powerful banning and blocking measures, allowing streamers to remove toxic individuals from their Followers list by blocking them and their Chat list by channel banning them.

On top of this, game developers themselves will often encourage good behavior in their games. For instance, DotA 2 (one of the most popular games on Steam) gives players a behavior score based on their interactions in the game: if you’re friendly and helpful you’ll have a high score, whereas if you continually ruin games and get reported you’ll have a low score. The game applies this when matching up players so that those who have a high behavior score are less likely to interact with those who have a low behavior score, limiting the negative effect that toxic players will have on the rest of the community.

Conclusion

While it’s clear that the level of toxic activity does vary from game to game, it’s also fair to say that no online games are entirely free from toxicity. However, there are certainly better ways of responding to and dealing with this kind of behaviour. For instance:

1. Report them. The majority of online games offer a way of reporting other players if they’re being toxic or otherwise deliberately trying to negatively impact the game.

2. Mute/block them. This depends on the game, but many give you the ability to either mute or block other players.

3. Ignore them. If possible, don’t let toxic players get inside your head. They’re hoping to force a reaction out of you – don’t give them what they want!

These days there are many well-known streamers and gamers who are try to play in a distinctly non-toxic way – they focus on giving out good vibes and they always encourage their teammates and audience to do the same. Examples include:

• CouRageJD
• Cuppcaake
• AnnieBot
• barcode_ow
• Upshall

Can you list the most toxic gaming communities you’ve ever been to?

And how much toxic behavior have you experienced while playing games online?

Let us know in the comment section below.

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We break down the world’s international hotspots for budding gaming enthusiasts and competitive gamers alike.

Gaming is a growing, multi-billion-dollar industry – and it’s showing no signs of slowing down any time soon. With streaming services like Twitch and Mixer catapulting talented competitive gamers into the spotlight, the popularity of games is growing exponentially.

For some, it’s a career path and a primary source of income. For others, it’s more of a passion or hobby. Either way, that doesn’t stop millions of people flocking to some of the world’s biggest cities for gaming events, console releases, and competitions.

Whilst the industry is growing, interest is springing up worldwide. If you’re passionate about immersing yourself in the events, working in the industry or gaming competitively, it’s best to know which cities share your obsession with the craft. That’s why we’ve put together a list of the best cities for gamers worldwide. Read on to discover our findings.

Which Cities Hold the Most Major Gaming Industry Events?

We started by looking into major gaming events hosted in various cities across the globe. To do this, we scraped the data from the Events for Gamers calendar and tallied how many events were hosted by each city across 2018 and 2019.

San Francisco took the top spot with 36 major gaming events across 2018/19. In second place was Los Angeles and in third was London.

The United States is home to six of the biggest gaming cities in the top 10 in terms of events, with two located in Canada and two in Europe. Adjusting for population, San Francisco dominated the tables with by far the most events per-capita, proving it to be a sizeable hub for events on the world stage.

Which Cities Have the Highest Number of Major Gaming Companies?

Using the list of companies and locations provided by Golden.com, we tallied up the number of large, world-renowned game industry companies. This showed us which cities are home to the highest number of companies.

It was Japan that topped the list with a higher number of gaming companies than the next five cities put together. San Francisco ranks second, showing it is indeed a gaming haven – likely to be because of the influence that Silicon Valley has in the gaming community. Europe is also proving to be a big global player. This data set wasn’t adjusted for population size as there seems to be no correlative link between the number of companies and a city’s population.

Which Cities Have the Biggest Game Store Density?

To get the data here, the quantity of video game shops was found using data provided by Google Maps searches. We set their data against each city’s respective populations to calculate the number of shops per 100K people that the public has available to them.

When it comes to shop availability, New Delhi came out on top convincingly, having the second smallest population but the third-highest total shops, meaning when accounting for the population it ranked first. Porto and Lisbon followed in second and third respectively. The only North American city to feature on the list was Miami coming in seventh. South Africa’s capital Cape Town and largest city Johannesburg broke into the top ten for the first time in our tables, showing there’s a definite appetite for games in the country.

Which Cities Have the Most Gaming-Related Job Openings?

The aim here was to find out which city has the largest proportion of its job openings dedicated to the gaming industry. We pulled the amount of video-game related opportunities from two job-searching apps, Indeed and Careerjet. We then referenced that as a percentage of the total amount of jobs available on each app and averaged their results, showing us which cities prioritize game development roles.

Montréal swamped the competition, having nearly double the proportion opportunities of the next two promising cities, Brighton and New Delhi. In terms of job availability, Montréal had five times the openings than that of its nearest competitor, Los Angeles. Surprisingly, the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Osaka didn’t even rank in the top ten despite having 61 major gaming firms between them.

Which Cities Have the Highest Online Interest in Gaming According to Google?

Using Google’s Keyword Planner, we were able to extract data about people’s search habits for games. Using keywords centered around the topic of video games, we were able to break down which cities had been showing the most interest by search volume.

In terms of search volume vs each city’s potential number of reachable Google users , Australia leads the way with the cities of Melbourne and Sydney coming in first and second respectively. With Melbourne edging Sydney by only 0.42%, it’s no surprise they’re on top given Australia’s growing love of video games.

Istanbul, despite not having the highest percentage when factoring in reach, is an interesting case – it had the highest number of video game searches in the top ten.

What Changes Have Been Seen in Gaming Interest Since Lockdown?

By analyzing each city’s search volume data over time, we’re able to quantify how much time their residents spend searched for video games each month in recent years. This allowed us to see how peoples’ gaming interests have grown since world was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The increase in video game-related searches was almost inevitable. We were bound to immerse ourselves in an online world to stay connected to one another, particularly in response to the lockdown measures introduced in many countries.

Surprisingly, not a single city on the North American continent made it to the top of the list, despite leading in the number of companies and the number of major gaming events held.

It’s interesting that 90% of the cities that had the biggest increases are based in Europe – it could be a sign of a rapidly growing market across the continent.

Which Cities Love Gaming the Most – The Final Results

Taking all metrics into account, the city with the highest overall interest in video games turned out to be Montréal. While it isn’t home to a huge amount of game companies, the fact that the Ubisoft Montréal (one of the largest studios in the industry) has been based there since 1997 must more than make up for it. This might explain Montréal’s very high proportion of games industry jobs on Indeed and CareerJet. 

The city also saw a steady increase in online video game interest since lockdown, coming 21^st in the world. It had respectable finishing positions for the number of gaming events and density of game stores which helped it maintain its high ranking.

New Delhi finished in second overall. Despite ranking quite low for major games industry events and major games companies, it had the highest density of games stores and had the third highest proportion of games industry job openings, guiding it to a top spot.

Third place was awarded to San Francisco – a strong result based on the fact that the city had by far the largest number of games industry events in the world and scored highly on the number of gaming corporations. On the flip side, the city has a low density of games stores and a lower proportion of online interest in video games compared to most of the ranked cities, consequently bringing the score down.

At the other end of the spectrum, Mexico City came firmly last. Aside from ranking at the bottom for the number of major industry events and the number of major games companies, the city has actually seen an 11.4% decrease in online interest in gaming since the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

Methodology

After gathering the requisite information from the individual data points, we normalised the results to give our cities a score of out ten for each factor. This was achieved via the following minmax normalisation formula:

Result = (x-min(x))/(max(x)-min(x))

We then averaged each city’s scores to create an overarching total, allowing us to discover which city loves gaming the most.

All major cities listed by the UN Statistics Division were considered for the index. To refine the list, all cities with any missing data points were removed to provide rankings of the utmost accuracy.
In this study, we delved into factors that we felt were reflective of a city’s level of interest in video games. If you’d like to see the full rankings of each data point, as well as their sources, click here.

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Perfect your Aim even when under Stress

In this guide, we go in-depth into how to improve your aim and perform your best while under pressure, this guide is for everyone that wants to learn how to stay calm, focused and in control while playing a high-stake FPS game.

In my career as an esports player, I noticed that players including myself suffered performance issues while playing high stacked matches due to stress.

This mainly resulted in bad decision making (passive play), lower accuracy (overshooting), poor positioning and eventually losing more games than I should have.

To find out what was going on aside from the fact that I was just “nervous” I started to record my heartbeat, breathing, and my gameplay throughout the whole match.

The results were quite clear, as the pressure got higher my heartbeat increased and my breathing became heavier which obviously adversely affected my overall performance.

To evolve as a player, I needed to find a way to keep myself in check when facing any high-pressure situation.

This guide summarizes the key learning points I have reached to keep my stress level to a minimum and how I brought a new sense of calm and deep focus into my gameplay to guarantee more wins than losses.

How does stress affect the brain, body and subsequently your Aim?

Before tackling the problem, we first need to know what causes it.

When we find ourselves under a highly stressful situation like for example public speaking for a large audience or playing in an esports tournament final, our bodies release hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. When these catecholamines reach your bloodstream, it leads to increased cardiac output, heavier breathing, reduced muscle control, tunnel visioning, and subsequently a clouded mind. Which is actually great for when you’re running for your life but not when playing FPS games.

In other words, reducing these catecholamines levels in our bloodstream is essential for getting our body and mind back into the game instead of searching for the exit sign. 

How to Improve your Aim Performance Under Pressure in 4 Steps

1.  Work on your mindset

One of the most important things you need to keep in mind for how to improve your aim is that it’s just a game!

99.99% of all people are playing games for fun and not for a living and even so it’s not that your life is hanging by the thread of winning or losing, I don’t give it more weight than needed.

This way you will produce fewer stress hormones that benefit your play and you will have more fun!

How to Improve your Aim: A Practical Approach

o   Don’t stress over your in-game rank

A lot of people are putting way too much emphasis on their rank. The moment I played to improve my game and not to improve my rank was the moment my play really progressed and along with it my rank.

I didn’t care about winning or losing the only thing that mattered was having fun. The minute I wasn’t having fun, I simply stopped playing rather than letting myself get carried away with anger or tilt.

o   See it as a Challenge not a Threat 

When playing a high-pressure game your mind needs to be focused on the challenge at that moment and not what the future holds as a consequence of the result, hence somewhat a threat.

Don’t think “If I lose this fight then my promotion is gone” but think “I’m excited to play against such a great player and I feel great about it”.

And while the experience is somehow the same, the approach is different, in the sense that a different outcome and the negative chemistry released when under stress will now be replaced by positive ones such as increased testosterone. This can only work when you stay positively in the moment with your mind at ease.

So stop worrying about the consequences or seeing your opponent as a threat resembling fear triggering your survival instincts, instead see it as a challenge that brings excitement and opportunity.

Don’t Overthink Mechanics

·        When you’re in a stressful situation your peripheral cortex tends focused on the wrong things. Like actively thinking on how to take that shot while in other circumstances you don’t think about it, you just go on autopilot.

The fact that you’re actively thinking about something that usually is left out of a conditional awareness makes it more likely you will fail to execute it properly.

With that comes the fact you end up paying less attention to what’s going on around you which results in clouding your game sense.

So, make yourself aware of the fact that you’re thinking about stuff you shouldn’t pay attention to and actively tell yourself to concentrate on the goal of your play instead of the execution of your aim.

Simulate High Pressure Scenarios

·        Don’t fool yourself thinking that when the time comes you will be ready for it and the stress won’t affect you because it certainly will. Instead, train your resistance against it by forcing yourself into high pressure situations in order to build stamina and tolerance level.

·        A Practical Approach

o   Stop playing quick play and start ranked games

One of the easiest and most effective ways to increase your stress tolerance is by playing ranked games instead of quick play.

This way you even the stage on which you play and after a while you will feel less nervous or not at all nervous as if you were playing a short game. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be playing your ace game and lose focus! If you feel your attention is slipping away then quit! Otherwise, all purpose is gone.

When you’re playing, ALWAYS be conscious about your heartbeat, listen to your breath and actively tell yourself to calm down if needed, this is how to improve your aim.

Another benefit of playing ranked is that FPS gamers tend to play more seriously in that arena, which creates a better environment to train your aim.

o  Picture yourself in a High Pressure Situation

Force yourself into thinking that every ranked game is a promotion match and that every encounter is crucial for the outcome of that match.

Do not just play randomly but imagine high pressure plays and really focus on them. Adapt this attitude and it will carry itself seamlessly while playing high-pressure shooter games.

That way you naturally build up your tolerance for stress and adapting to stressful situations more easily.

Practice Box Breathing

·        This method of breathing is used by many athletes and US Navy seals and is proven to be very effective in stressful situations.

The execution is fairly simple

1.  Take a deep breath deep through your nose for 4 seconds and focus on breathing into your stomach.

2.   Hold this for 4 seconds

3.   Exhale for 4 seconds

4.   Hold this on for 2 seconds

By breathing through your nose you increase the Nitrate Oxide level in your bloodstream which increases the blood flow and lowers the blood pressure helping you relax.

Overall it’s better to breathe into your stomach than into your chest if you want to calm down or find yourself in a stressful situation.

Conclusion

Practice makes perfect, so don’t think that by just reading this guide you can keep your stress level in check. You will actively need to train yourself, and think about every step if you want to become a master of your own mind. This doesn’t come overnight and takes some dedication.

The quickest answer to how to improve your aim is like the US Navy Seals quote goes: “The more you sweat in times of peace the less you bleed in times of war”. Or in other words, if you are hard on yourself during practice and put yourself in harsh and stressful conditions while training, the moment of truth will feel like a homecoming!

Aim to Conquer your stress, your self doubt and you will conquer your opponents. Join the Academy today and start training on your own for ranked games. The next level would be to invite a friend or a foe to a duel on 3D Aim Trainer Multiplayer Games mode.

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