Learning SC2

I recently had an interesting knowledge management class in which we discussed the concept of knowledge within a community of practice (ie. a group of people who practice within a particular field) and how experience affects knowledge. As per usual I choose to think about this in relation to Starcraft instead of the business world. ^_^ There is one particularly good quote which sums up what I am talking about, try to see if you can figure out how I applied it to Starcraft.

“When we learn a discipline whether at school or on the job, we learn more than facts, ideas and techniques. We enter a territory already occupied by others and learn by participating with them in the language of that discipline and seeing the world through it’s distinctions. We learn a way of thinking.”

There are quite a few points for discussion but I am going to focus on what I feel to be the most relevant for someone learning Starcraft 2: the aspects of the learning process and how they relate to your in game improvement. Why is this relevant for someone who wants to become a good Starcraft 2 player? A common thing that holds players of all levels back is that they only focus on one particular area of the entire learning process.

I tried to drill down to the most important aspects of the learning process as it applies to Starcraft 2 and this is what I came up with (in nifty diagram format):

Combine the information you receive with practice and experience to get Knowledge and Mechanics, combine your Knowledge and Mechanics to get Execution.

Usually, the first thing new players do when they want to learn StarCraft 2 is to seek out information. Information is all well and good but by itself it cannot achieve much (notice that information is not connected to execution in the diagram). For example you may read or see in a video that constantly building workers will help you do better in the game. However, until you have actually practiced constant worker production you will receive no benefit from that information.

When you combine information and practice or experience (experience is more closely linked to the knowledge side of the process) you will improve in either knowledge or mechanics. However, to have good execution in game (execution is how you actually carry out your planned strategy) you have to have good knowledge AND mechanics. Try to think of execution as being 50% knowledge and 50% mechanics (whether this is the case or not).

This is where the problems commonly arise for new players (and probably experienced players too). It is too easy to get stuck focusing only one side of the learning process, usually the ‘knowledge’ side. Too often players with poor execution focus only on trying to find the ‘best’ strategy or build and neglect the mechanics side of the game. If we keep in mind that ‘knowledge’ is only 50% of the equation then its easy to see why this can hamper our progress. It may seem that I am mocking newer players, but I too suffer from this imbalance in learning. If my mechanics were to instantly catch up to my game knowledge I would probably be in diamond tomorrow (I am now in Silver after my recent promotion ^_^).

Make sure you balance your time between practicing/researching strategies (Knowledge) and practicing/refining your core gameplay skills (Mechanics).

So what can we do about this imbalance in the learning process? Simply keeping in mind that knowledge is only half of the process is a good first step. If you find that you are spending most of your time looking up or practicing strategies try to instead put some of your time towards practicing your mechanics. A good way to do this is to focus on one particular mechanic for a series of games, for example, making sure that for the next 5 games you are constantly building workers and then for the five games after that make sure that you are spending all of your minerals. Then go back to practicing your strategies for the next 10 games. If you keep your learning time balanced like this you will see your self progress at a much faster rate.

You may have noticed that this article was a lot shorter than usual, I realised that this topic had a severe chance of suffering from the dreaded TL;DR. To avoid this I tried to keep it short and to the point. However, if you want to know more do not hesitate to ask questions in the comments below. I will always take the time to respond if you take the time to comment.