Years of experience supporting elite-level esport performers have taught me this vital lesson... players don’t always make good decisions.

Have you ever made a questionable decision or regretted a choice in your gaming career? Often, our brains are not the reliable allies we believe them to be. Whether it is choosing to ignore the advice from your coach to making a game-losing decision, we are fallible in our decision-making. Despite our best intentions, we can make a decision that harms our performance and development. You are not alone; many of us share these experiences. This post explores how our minds can lead us to poor decisions, especially in the context of esports.

Understanding How We Make Decisions

When making decisions, our brain uses two systems. The first is slow and deliberate, examining every piece of information carefully to make the best possible choice. This process is mentally demanding, requiring effort to gather, organise, and analyse data before deciding.

Because this method is so taxing, our brain often defaults to the second system. This one is faster and more automatic, taking shortcuts to quickly reach a decision that is just good enough. While efficient, this system can lead to many “uh oh” moments in decision-making. Here are some biases our minds have that impact this system and lead to those decisions. This was outlined by famed psychologist Daniel Kahneman (and Amos Tversky) in Kahneman’s book,* Thinking Fast and Slow.*

Confirmation Bias

Disagreements between players are common and I have had the pleasure of witnessing many of them during my esports psychology career. The general sentiment is as follows: “Everything I’m saying is correct and everything you are saying is not”, which leads to the decision to continue arguing and fighting with the other player. There’s an underlying reason why these scenarios continue and we make the decision to stick to our version of events. This reason is known as the *confirmation bias. *We have a tendency to look and focus on information that supports our beliefs. So when we make a decision, we base it off of information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs. In this example, it means players are likely to only take in information that supports their argument and completely ignore information that goes against it. We then decide to keep arguing, not take in another perspective or relevant pieces of information.

For example, you might believe that training must be rigid and serious, with no room for fun. If your coach suggests that elements of training should be fun to boost creativity, you might dismiss this and only recall details that reinforce your original belief that strict, structured practice is the sole path to elite skills.

Egocentric Bias

How you see yourself as a competitor differs from how others see you. You may rely more on your own perspective than that of others in fuelling your decision-making. This is called *egocentric bias. *In esports, you may see your teammate deciding to make a play that benefits them rather than the team. When you ask them why they did that, they may only give you reasons related to what they could see and how they view the game. The problem is clear, they didn’t consider the needs and perspectives of their teammates in their decision-making.

For example, games such as VALORANT, LoL (League of Legends) and CS2 (Counter-Strike 2) rely on more than individual ability. Your ability to coordinate with your teammate will move you from good to great. Those with an egocentric bias may find it difficult to make decisions that consider other people’s perspectives. This results in more selfish gameplay that harms the team’s objective.

Focusing Illusion

Have you had those games where you forget everything around you and simply lock in on one small part of the screen, similar to tunnel visioning? Now imagine this when it comes to your decision-making. We may tunnel vision and fixate on one small piece of information instead of looking at the bigger picture. I like to refer to this as making decisions with our blinders on (the thing that race horses wear on their eyes to block their peripheral vision).

This is called the *focusing illusion *and is when we try to predict the future based off of a single piece of information. The issue with this is it results in a less accurate view of the future, leading to making decisions based off very limited information. An example in competition is when you are watching a potential opponent play a competitive match, let’s go with FIFA. You see them score an incredible goal to win a game, despite them performing quite badly the whole game. This bias would mean that you used information from that one glorious goal, rather than information from the whole game, to predict how good the opponent will be. This then fuels you to make changes to your gameplay to compensate for your heightened view of this opponent you will be facing. Leading to overly complex and unhelpful gameplay against an opponent who isn’t that good, ultimately making the match harder than it needed to be.

What Can We Learn?

1. Your brain prefers to save energy by taking shortcuts.
2. These shortcuts can lead to poor and questionable decisions if you are not careful.
3. Stay aware of when you might be cutting corners and ensure your decisions rely on key, relevant information.

By recognising these cognitive biases and understanding how your mind works, you can improve your decision-making and perform better in esports. Remember, awareness is the first step towards mastering your mind and your game.