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Slay the Spire vs Artifact: What is my brain is doing differently?
I’ve been playing a lot of Slay the Spire lately. I’ve found that it’s really scratched the itch for card games in a way that I never really appreciated before, and I’ve been spending a long time tinkering with how to approach different decks and challenges. Ironically, I wish I could be doing this with…
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Training, execution, and mindfulness
I have a hard time being present. It sounds simple enough: focusing and engaging with the moment in front of you. My biggest distraction there is thinking about what’s down the road, and the consequences of wrong choices. This is pretty much the foundation of my anxiety and a lot of my mental health issues.
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Dealing with moments of panic in gaming: the first wall
I think the thing that frustrates me most about learning video games are the panic moments where you know what you should have done, but lack the mental clarity to put them into practice. In a high-pressure situation, I sometimes can’t connect the dots to what I’m seeing and what I need to do to successfully…
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Dodging the matchup: playing against characters I hate
I’ve come to realize I have a little bit of a phobia when it comes to facing certain characters. This usually comes from when they’ve beat me pretty hard in the past, and that kind of carries over to future matches where I think the same thing is going to happen. There’s some commonalities between…
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Ladder anxiety: wanting to play, but not
Like a lot of people starting out with competitive gaming, I’m having some problems with ladder anxiety. For the uninitiated, ladder anxiety happens when you avoid playing ranked (or even unranked) matchmaking due to different reasons. Some people might be hesitant to risk the rank they’ve already earned, or those that are starting out might…
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Starting the journey: being new at Street Fighter and Dota 2
The last couple days have been an exercise in patience. I’ve decided that I’m going to put more of my effort into improving in two competitive multiplayer games: I’m going to both try to get better at Dota 2 and Street Fighter V.