How to learn games quickly?
An endeavour to create a list of bullet points to learn to play a game, or learn to watch a game.
Learning to watch a game is different because it is not important to be good at something to be able to understand what is happening; even though mechanical skills can always be appreciate (and are what generates hype), what usually fascinates fans is the thought processes behind games decisions.
Bullet points should be focused around the game flow, how to achieve Y by doing x. The flow is the most important thing to understand about a game, mechanics and knowledge revolve around it, it can be described as the pace toward the end-goal grouping the most common sequences of inputs.
I used the word pace as to say the game flow looks a lot like a rhythm. Understanding how a video game match unfolds is somewhat similar to reading a music sheet, there are ups and downs, fast moments, slow moments, crescendo and the notorious calm before the storm.
Bullets points should focus on particular aspects of the game, some are more genre oriented, some are game oriented. Example, to appreciate DOTA clashes, what is important is not so much the team fight itself, but the position of players before the team fight. Such information can really be appreciated and makes you love a team more than another, because depicts the preparation and coordination that each player goes through. The outcome ofa team fight is often decided by the position of each player before it.
In counter strike the coordination and the execution of setups is what can be appreciated, much more then frags that tend to be repetitive in their execution and expected at a certain level of skill. 1vX scenarios can also be really admirable because they breakout from team strategies where 2+vX tend to just be a subset of those, and let the player show off their skill, and level of quick thinking, also such scenarios tend to be the most original in term of positions on the map.
