Changing Your Win Conditions

So far, I've mostly been talking about how to figure out where you want to be as a player and what it means for you to be "good" at Starcraft.  Today, I want to discuss something a little bit different: how to (and why you should) change your "win condition" in order to improve.

Right now, your win condition is probably pretty simple.  If your opponent GGs out, or if you destroy all of his buildings, you win.  If you GG out, or if you lose all of your buildings, you lose.  Easy to understand and remember - after all, we've been learning about winning and losing since before grade school :)

Funnily enough, the thing that makes us want to improve - the feeling that we get when winning or knowing that we're good at something - can often get in the way of actually improving.  We get so focused on chasing that sensation, both in game and out of it, that when we fail to achieve it we tend to feel pretty miserable.  In something like Starcraft, that feeling tends to materialize as frustration, anger, or even rage, especially when expending a great effort just to lose or be completely steamrolled by an unexpected build or tactic.  The Enter-->gg-->Enter-->F10-->n combo is one of the bitterest pills to swallow, especially when you feel like you're working so hard to get better but not seeing any results.

At the end of the day, you can roughly assume that winning more often means that you're getting better at Starcraft.  But if you really want to improve certain aspects of your play and therefore get better and therefore win more games, then you need to make improving your win condition instead of your opponent's "gg".

As an example of what I mean, let me supply a comment I made on a Reddit thread a while back:

Make winning your goal, but make something else your focus.

For instance - right now, my focus is not getting supply blocked. Not because I think that's the biggest problem with my game, not because I think that it on its own is going to take me to the next league, but because getting supply blocked is the most stressful in-game thing that happens to me. Right now, not getting supply blocked is more interesting to me than winning or losing.

As a result, this is what happens to me at the end of my games:

"Wow, tough loss. Had him on the ropes multiple times, but made stupid decisions and...oh holy shit, only a 0:19 supply block! For a 45 minute game! Awwwww yissssss."

or

"Sniping thirds, sniping thirds, sniping thirds, big engage and...yeah that's right you GG out! Now let's...oh God, I spent 2:13 blocked? That's terrible, I really need to pay more attention to that."

Winning and losing have emotional components. Those emotional components drive the desire to be better. They also get in the way of improvement. The glow of victory keeps you from identifying and correcting your mistakes. The agony of defeat makes you miserable, bitter, and ruins your fun and your focus. Pick something that you have total control over - not getting supply blocked, a particular timing attack, scouting and appropriate reaction, etc. - and make that your victory/loss condition and see what happens.

By changing my win condition in my head to "not getting supply blocked", I'm able to focus on a specific, tangible thing that will make me a better player.  And because I'm so focused on me doing that one particular thing correctly, losing a game matters less to me than making sure I build supply depots when I need them (Not entirely, of course, but for the most part that holds true).

As a result of this change, I now spend less time supply blocked, which means I can put more units on the field, which means I'm in a much better position when either defending or attacking, which means I'm winning more games, which means I'm getting better.  In the meantime, I'm less frustrated about losses because 1) losing an individual game is less important than playing "correctly", and 2) I know exactly what I need to do in the next game (address supply block issue) to at least feel like I've done something better than I have been doing in the past.

Suggestion:  Pick a part of your gameplay that could use improvement.  Not getting supply blocked, constant worker/unit production, recognizing and reacting to your opponent's build while scouting, macroing during battles, etc.  Now, spend a few games focusing on that thing and only that thing.  If you win the game, great, doesn't matter.  If you lose the game, great, doesn't matter.  What matters is whether or not you met your new win condition, whatever it is.  After a while, "winning" becomes second nature, automatic, even, and you can pick a new win condition to improve upon.  But just so you know - there is no end to this cycle of improvement.  Even Boxer still has things to work on.