Deep inside every competitor there lurks the heart of a champion.  But heart isn't the only thing that makes a champion.

It seems as though a perfect storm needs to occur to create a true beast player.  Everything from Internet connection quality, upbringing, country of residence, and socio-economic standing play a part in determining a gamer's skill. 

Still, gamers' brains differ when it comes to response time and accuracy, which can be trained up to a point. Scientists who analyze athletes say that part of the secret to amazing skill is myelin.

What's myelin? It's time for a lesson in biology: myelin is a fatty sheath that covers nerves in the brain. Repeated activation of specific nerve cells activates cells called ogliodendrocytes, which in turn add multiple layers of myelin over the nerve.

Myelin insulates nerves, preventing electrical current from leaking out of the circuit, and engineers them for speed.  Whereas unmyelinated nerves send signals in waves, myelinated nerves send impulses in "hops" from cell to cell over the Nodes of Ranvier (gaps between the cells).  Speaking in unscientific terms, signals that hop are quicker than wave signals.

The only way to "grow" myelin is to go through the motions--that is, to practice and improve over time.  After doing so, the player will attune his or her nerves to those specific motions.  This is important not just for speed and power, but also accuracy; remember, it doesn't matter if you can flick a sniper shot in 1 millisecond if you don't hit your target.  Likewise, reaching 800 actions per minute in StarCraft don't mean much if they're not accurate and relevant (although the guys who actually reach 800 APM are beasts).

It's a slow process.  According to the New York Times (registration required), the ogliodendrocyte wraps the nerve "40 or 50 times, which can take days or weeks."  That wrapping needs to take place across the entire nerve circuit.  And there's really no telling how many nerve circuits you need to myelinate to get good; it depends on the discipline.

Now you understand why it takes so long to get good at an activity.  It's not just a question of time put in; your brain is actually remodeling itself.

Then it becomes a question of how long it takes to be an expert at something.  Experts in the study of how long it takes to become an expert (seriously) peg that number at around ten years.  That's ten years of constant improvement, not easy practices. Age plays a factor, too, as the younger you are, the easier it is to myelinate your nerves.

Let's take a look at some highly successful athletes that could be considered beasts in their sports.

Tiger Woods: 31 years old, he has played golf since the age of two. Okay, this guy's been playing for a freakishly long time.  He's also freakishly good, even if he lost the edge a little bit when he married his hot Swedish wife.

Roger Federer: 25 years old. He's been playing tennis since the age of six.

Zinedine Zidane: 34 years old. Played futbol professionally since the age of 16 with AS Cannes, but like many European kids, kicked up the ball much earlier than that.  Zidane is still a beast, headbutt or no. (Retired)

Moving on from "real" sports to gaming, here are some examples of beast players in different disciplines and their gaming experience.


Paul "czm" Nelson: 23 or 24 years old, has played Quake approximately since QuakeWorld's release in 1996. Paul is currently pursuing a Ph.D at CalTech--clearly, he's a beast in every fashion.

Johnathan "fatal1ty" Wendel: 26 years old, has been playing Quake since it was released in 1996. Anytime a big prize purse is up for grabs, this guy's inexplicably in the running. (Inactive this year)

Johan "Toxic" Quick: 22 years old, he's played Quake approximately since QuakeWorld's release in 1996.  2006's money list speaks for itself; Johan cleared over $90,000 in winnings last year playing Quake 4.

According to this Xfire chat, Ron "Rambo" Kim has been playing Counter-Strike since Beta 1.0, which was released on June 16th, 1999. That's almost nine years of experience. Likewise, most true CS legends have been at it for over five years.

Lim "Boxer" Yo-Hwan: 27 years old. Boxer played StarCraft professionally from 1999/2000 until his military obligations forced him to take a break in 2006. He has since formed a Korean Air Force StarCraft team.  Lim is best known for the constantly-changing strategies that kept him on or close to the top for many years.  The people's champion, Boxer was voted the Greatest Gamer Of All Time by ESReality users in 2004.

These are just the easiest examples from the long list of dominant players in all gaming disciplines.  There are many more out there. Of course, games like Call of Duty/2, Wolfenstein/Enemy Territory, and Warcraft 3 haven't existed for ten years, but most top gamers are experienced in more than one discipline.  Actually, it's a given that they grew up on Nintendo, Sega, and Playstation (except the Koreans).

"Ok," you say. "Naturally, the best players have been playing forever. That's not news."

But it took fatal1ty five years of playing Quake to produce a big money duel championship (1996-2000).  czm also took four to five years of steady improvement to put clan Kapitol over the top and bring home the bread in Q3 team deathmatch.  His individual perfect storm didn't occur until 2004 when he won QuakeCon.

Rambo's X3 team started winning big money in 2001 with Speakeasy CPL.  Three years. 

Toxic was always known as a beast in team deathmatch, but only really got his dueling career together in 2006, so his individual beast-o-meter took eleven years to register.

Boxer won his first championship in 1999, which is around the time that the Korean pro scene took off.  It's unclear when he started playing StarCraft. Maybe he bucked the trend--he's not called "the StarCraft Jesus" for nothing.

Certainly, lots of factors play a part in any gamer's success, not the least his/her choice of discipline and its complexity, but all beast gamers constantly improve over time.  These guys weren't mythical players the moment they won their first tournaments; they added even more trophies after their first victories, which made them the legends they are today.

Going back to biology, one can speculate that it took several years for these players to build up the attuned nerves to win championships.  Then they improved further to become legendary competitors with rabid, slobbering fans. In gaming terms, it took them quite a long time to become "experts."  Some of them are ancient by gaming standards.

At a time when the quick fix and quick money are big attractors for competitive gamers, the ideals of constant improvement and hard work often get the short end of the stick.  Everybody wants to go to the party; nobody wants to clean up. (Bonus points if you can name the movie this quote came from).

Science has proven, however, that it takes a long time to become a beast at anything.  Practice truly makes perfect, whether on the guitar, with the golf club, or mouse.

Posted by mahmood on Mar 19 2007 6:05AM