How a Century Old Russian Theory Can Help Video Game Tournament Organizers
Chef: Lev Vygotsky; Ingredient: Zone of Proximal Development
Ever since I attended my first Super Smash Bros. Melee tournament during my freshman year, I knew I wanted to better understand (and develop) this relatively new phenomena.
What started as a small group of friends playing a game of Smash Bros.turned into a network of players from across the country, all vying for the gold.
In my role as President and lead organizer of TCNJ’s Competitive Gaming Club, and as the founder of Lions Smash LLC I’ve come to understand that people want to learn about these games, improve their skills, and (of course) have a lot of fun. I’ve learned that they do that best when they’ve got friends helping them.
Meet Lev Vygotsky
The ideas of Lev Vygotsky, a prolific 19th century Russian psychologist who studied human and cultural development have helped me better understand some of the behaviors that are going on in my tournaments.
The main ingredient is something he called the Zone of Proximal Development (or ZPD). That’s the idea that novices can learn from experts, as long as they have guided aid.
Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)
Whenever I play in a tournament and I’m facing off against an opponent that is strictly better than me, I don’t usually fret and get disappointed.
I get excited for the opportunity to play against someone and learn what they have to teach me. After organizing several competitive tournaments across a variety of video games, I’ve learned that most people also share this feeling. Learning is such a powerful human need, and the Zone of Proximal Development is a way of explaining one facet of how we learn to be better in competitive video games.
A glance at the chart above shows three circles. These circles are a visual representation of skill levels between a high level player, an expert, and a low level player, a novice. With the help of an expert, a novice can learn how to accomplish more advanced techniques or achieve a mindset to better suit them for competitive play. The novice’s skill might improve therefore they may see more desirable results.
More than the Zone
While ZPD a handy representation of Vygotsky’s work, there’s more. Vygotsky’s ideas also inspired something many educators refer to as instructional scaffolding — or helping a novice attain a deeper level of mastery.
In the Competitive Gaming Club, we host tournaments for different games. Three of the most popular are Super Smash Bros., Overwatch, and Magic: the Gathering. Each presents opportunities for instructional scaffolding.
Never Self-Destruction — But Self-Construction
Whenever a character is KO’d without getting hit by an opponent in Super Smash Bros.it is called a “self-destruct.”
Often times, new players accidentally self-destruct and feel embarrassed due to their mistakes. Sometimes these feelings can build up and the player feels like they can’t learn.
For the tournaments that we run, we frequently host “amateur brackets” that encourage novice players to come out and have fun. We understand that there are a lot of novice players who would like to join tournaments, but are afraid of getting outright destroyed.
This allows casual and novice players the room to have fun while also learning more about the game.
Mixing novices with experts
The first feature is that learning should take place between someone who wants to learn and someone who is capable. The interaction between these individuals should be collaborative and constructive.
In amateur brackets of tournaments we host, novices face off against themselves. They’re also encouraged to enter our normal brackets where they can compete with higher level experts. Not only is it fun to play with someone around your skill level, but you’re able to push yourself and learn more by competing and fighting against opponents who may be more skilled than you. This is often a motivator for our newer and usually lower-leveled players as they want to beat their friends in a friendly rivalry.
Plus, there’s also friendlies and round robins for our Smash Bros. tournaments. A “friendly match” is where players fight each other in a fun, friendly setting outside of a tournament. Round robin-style tournaments are structured in a way that has everyone of different skill levels play each other once. Both of these are often found in Smash Bros. tournaments and are a great way to learn from masterful players and mentor lower-leveled players all while having tons of fun. In a way this all reinforces that learning should take place between someone who wants to learn and someone who is capable.
Get on the Payload — And in the Zone
In order to differentiate a high level player from a low level player, there must be observable behaviors. All high level players were originally low level players, just as all experts were once novices.
What have these experts done to get to their position? They spent time within their own Zone of Proximal Development.
In Blizzard’s Overwatch, teams of six players compete against each other to be victorious in a few game modes. One game mode is that one team must successfully escort a “payload” from point A to point B where the other team must prevent them from doing so. In Overwatch games, some teams completely forget about the payload and are more focused on scoring kills against the other team.
You can probably tell who’s an expert or a novice by judging how frequently they escort the payload. Our college hosts a wide range of players whose skill levels vary. We have players who score in Diamond ranks, the highest competitive rank in Overwatch, and those who settle for Bronze, the lowest rank. We average the wide range of players into teams so that the novices and the experts were not all on one team, which allows for a fun and competitive learning experience. The novices were able to learn from the experts on staying focused on objectives, and the experts were able to learn from the novices on how to adapt their play style to suit the team.
The Magic of the Scaffold
While Magic: the Gathering is a card game and not a video game it still is amongst the most competitive games we host tournaments for. In this game, players build decks of cards and play with a specific set of rules to reduce their opponent’s life to 0. Most of the fun comes before you start a game, by building a deck using any cards you have collected so far. Each deck is unique and fits a specific play style, which leads to varied and wild matches.
The third feature is that the scaffold itself is gradually removed as the learner becomes more proficient. In our Magic tournaments, players come hoping to showcase their latest deck ideas and their potential game strategies. As they get better at deckbuilding, and making impactful plays versus an opponent, a learner might not need the guidance or support of an expert any longer. This gap closes as the novice gradually reaches the skill of an expert. While the magic of the scaffold is how players can coach others and suggest strategies on how to go about against certain other players, the middle circle of Vygotsky’s ZPD will slowly get smaller and smaller. At that point, the novice has become an expert, and can now repeat the cycle with another novice.
After years of organizing these types of tournaments and seeing how they function, I’ve realized that providing a venue for people to have fun, make new friends, and learn is one of the best things I’ve ever done.
When people get together and bond over interests they both share, they logically want to strive towards improvement, for themselves and their friends. Vygotsky’s powerful concepts help me understand why they work, and how they might work better to help novices experience more success … increasing the chance that they will learn and have a positive experience.
