I was listening to a podcast on the neuroscience of intelligence. Dr. Richard Haier said something that reminded me a lot about SC2 and APM:
You just said something though that I want to just make a distinction about. You're talking about the g factor and then you kind of called it iq. This is very common in everyday language to talk about intelligence - IQ and what we call the g factor as one thing and it really isn't. So an IQ score is a good estimate of the g factor, right, it also includes other aspects of intelligence and intelligence in itself although it's a broad term is only a part of the universe of mental abilities.
He continued: So if you're very good at say calculating on what day January 5th was in the year 1520 (that's a mental ability that some people have) doesn't mean you're smart
This reminded me a lot of SC2. There are many people who think it takes a lot of intelligence to be good at SC2. I disagree. The game is mostly about reaction speed which is measured in many metrics like APM. Reaction speed is in some sense a contradictory goal to intelligence. Often the intelligent solution requires much thought and analysis and most of all lots of time. SC2 doesnât give you lots of time - it gives you milliseconds. So SC2 is about cutting out those cognitive functions and short-circuiting the reflexes to map certain visual inputs to mouse and keyboard actions. The brain simply doesnât have time to even engage with the parts of the brain that do complex thinking.
So there is complex thinking in post-analysis of the game and in training the reflexes in how they should react, but when actually playing the game the complex thought processes are bypassed so players can react to the insanely fast pace of the game. Players can even bypass the complex thinking phase of the game by simply mimicking professional players.
I am wholly convinced intelligence only plays a very minor role in SC2. What are your thoughts?
I would bet large sums of money that intelligence correlates with MMR in SC2. Iâm not sure how closely they would be tied but thereâs a special kind of intelligence required to trick yourself into believing it wouldnât help.
Such a conclusion is strongly supported by the finding of a significant negative relationship between change in stop signal performance and change in actions per minute within the game. As StarCraft II trainees increased their in-game actions per minute (which is a crucial component of successful performance in RTS video games), their ability to inhibit their responses on the basis of visual stimuli decreased.
According to this study, there are no correlations between SC2 performance and other factors except with a reduced ability to regulate impulsive thoughts. In other words, SC2 trains you to cut out your complex thinking so you can spam actions as fast as possible. This quite likely hinders general intelligence.
Beastyqt has a mouse to GM series. Reaction speed isnât everything. Knowledge of the game, scouting and taking good fights/positioning is more important. Pretty much every replay I find at least one horrible fight where I either threw the game or almost threw the game. This is the difference between being good and bad.
âOnly individuals who reported playing action video games (first-person shooter, third-person shooter, real-time strategy, open-world action games, and multi-player online battle arenas) less than 5 h per week over the past 6 months were accepted to the study and invited for laboratory measures.â
So itâs only really applicable to the initial learning processes. Thinking about it, SC2 requiring virtually no intelligence to break into masters wouldnât even shock me. Most people that talk about their climb through masters say itâs only within that league that they started to begin to learn the game.
The study I linked in the OP is obviously corroborated by the charts above, showing a clear relationship between ALL leagues and their reaction delay (which proves itâs not an âintroductoryâ effect). There is some overlap between each of the leagues, meaning other factors blur the lines between leagues, but reaction speed is definitely what separates a GM from a Bronze.
Interestingly, there is a clear correlation between the number of hours played and the reaction speed. So the more you play, the faster your reactions are which makes perfect sense. So SC2 really is a game of and about grinding games to get your reaction speed as high as possible.
It disproves your claim that they were measuring an introductory effect. This is obviously something that heavily affects performance even in Grandmaster, the most veteran league of SC2.
Where? Please link to where they state they only took beginners. Thanks!
Translation: âI have no argument that can overcome such an overwhelming preponderance of evidence which utterly defeats my argumentâ.
Intelligence,not a lot, itâs more about knowledge and choosing the right decissions at the right moment, usually these decissions are automated after playing the same way many games.Trial and error, thatâs what starcraft is, it does not matter if you are fast,and really intelligent, if you can think about a lo of things during a game but only manage to choose the wrong paths, you will be inefficient.
I wish I could watch replays.
When ever I try to watch replays, my opponentâs selected SC2 personality voice-over (announcer) kicks in and annoys the hell out of me â so I am forced to close the replayâŚ
The worst voice-overs include inControl, artosis, korean guy, french guy, totalbiscuits, lowko, twitch bot man winter, and of course nasal-nate. I sincerely wish there was a button we can click to force opponent announcer into defaultâŚ
Starcraft 2, like most Blizzard games, is about muscle memory, not intellect of any kind. He who is fastest, wins, not he who has the better plan.
Sheer mechanical skill will carry you in this game, like in a MOBA. You do not need to know a lot about Strategy to win at Starcraft 2, you just need to outplay the opponent, with greater APM.
I include psychologists when I talk about the extremely greedy medical industry. I used to work in it. And I lived on the same floor as a bunch of drunk pre-med douchebags in college.
I know first hand that most doctors are just regular douchebags that paid to go to medical school. Psychologists are a different path of schooling, but still, donât do anything in college except theorize what was said before them.
Itâs amazing the amount of people i saw majoring in psychology in college. Itâs just like wow, they are just going to act like they care as they take money from people and the corrupt medical industry.
Itâs the same thing for lawyers. Most are douchebags that paid to go to law school. Either that, or they come from a family of lawyers and their dad makes them be on. How the hell else can you want to be one? Besides being greedy by nature from a young age.
Thatâs total BS. Itâs enough to see real strategic players (SoS) in order to not fall into the BatZ BS that all SC2 is muscle memory and reflexes.
Knowing what to do in the precise moment as well as to preempt or even cause the opponent to fall into a trap has nothing to do with animal muscle reflexes.
SC2 is a primitive approximation of the real warfare extended in military, economy and intelligence/counterinelligence. The speed of your fingers has little to do with the Rank that one achieves (as long as somebody has 100-150APM).
You are underestimating the vast majority of the player base. There is a point where intelligence/strategy doesnât matter that much and mechanics dominate - this happens around low/mid GM level I would say. However, this means that about 99% of players have not reached this cap. If you are in high master, then there probably is an intelligence factor that separates you from the next bracket of players. However, if you are anything below master, there is 100% an intelligence factor that comes into play. If you are stuck in diamond (or lower), there is a serious fundamental flaw in your gameplay that carries on from the very beginning to the end of every game. You can have low mechanics and think your way into low master at the very least. Every time I see a lower level player struggle with the game, I always ask them why do they make this god-awful mistake before 4 minutes into the game where thereâs little action? They canât answer me. The reason why we donât see intelligence as a big factor at the higher level is because we have the game pretty well figured out. It just comes down to our execution and mechanics. As for the lower level guys stuck in diamond or lower, they will never understand why they are stuck - just play 100 team games at the low level. You could be a high GM player and your ally still has a 50% chance of blaming you for the loss despite being completely useless. If you ever get the chance to criticize their play in replay, they will deflect and their minds will fall apart.
To sum up again, intelligence plays a huge role in SC2. It just feels minor at the top level because everyone is game-smart, so mechanics dominate.
What good reaction speed can do to a fast-fingered moron when he does not know what he is doing and why?
I guess he is able to do more stupidities in less time than before.
So, your asset turns into liability in my books.
I donât do SC2 PvP versus but my experience based on Warcraft 3 is knowledge base and strategy will get you to gold league ish, but then you need reaction time to get to high diamond / master level play. When you start talking GM / pro level reaction time is still at play but intelligence and strategy very much come back into play in terms of separating players.
Itâs never all or nothing. Game is combination of knowledge base, and key board speed and mechanics. I think though beyond high level gold until the very elite level of play there isnât a big gap in game knowledge.
