If you want to master your favorite game, you’re not alone. Gaming isn’t just about having fun (although that should always be the main focus); it’s about getting better and, of course, being the winner (even if you’re only playing against yourself). That means you need to get better and better at the games you play, but that can be a hard thing to do, and it can even become frustrating if you go about it the wrong way. With that in mind, here are some useful tips for how to master your favorite game.

Understand The Basics

It’s easy to get carried away when you’re playing a game and want to go to the advanced levels and use complicated strategies immediately, but it’s actually wiser to make sure you understand the basics first, as that will give you something to build from as you learn more skills and understand the game better.

It might not sound like a lot of fun, but taking the time to read the instructions and rules and to know what the actual objectives are of any game means you can play better when you do get started, and you’ll be in a much better position to progress smoothly, without the frustration you might feel otherwise.

Choose Your Game Well

Mastering a game takes time, dedication, and passion, so it’s absolutely crucial to pick a game you genuinely love and enjoy playing. No matter whether it’s a word search, an MMO, a sports game, a driving game, or anything else, it’s your enthusiasm for it that will help you move forward and master it.

You need motivation if you’re going to get better at something because you’ll need to keep playing it and practicing it - if you don’t like a game all that much or you’re not too interested, that motivation isn’t going to be there, so you won’t practice, and that means you won’t get better.

Watch The Professionals

If you want to master a particular game, you can do a lot worse than watching professionals play it. There are hundreds of gaming streamers you can connect with and thousands of videos that have been uploaded to sites like YouTube and Twitch. Find someone who already knows how to play the game you want to get better at and see how they do it.

You don’t necessarily want to cope them, move for move, but if you pay attention to their strategies, how they make decisions (and what decisions they make), and the techniques they use, you can start to include these things in your gameplay as well, and over time, that will get you where you want to be.

Learn From Your Mistakes

As with anything in life, you’re not going to be an expert as soon as you start playing a game, and you’re bound to make mistakes. Rather than getting frustrated or giving up because you keep losing, think of those mistakes as a useful way to learn what not to do, and that will help you see what you should be doing instead.

By reviewing your own gaming objectively, you can see where the errors keep happening and work out a way to get past them - and that’s all part of the fun.