Music and gaming..

This is something I thought about tonight while playing World of Warcraft (I’m doing the 0-100 Tanking Challenge as a warmup for the 15 for February). Music is good, Playing Video Games is good. Combining them should be a good thing always right? Not always..

There are times where you feel like you have to concentrate on the game you’re playing, especially something like World of Warcraft, that so much is happening, that subtle audio cues may be the easiest way for you to realize, for example that you’ve lost (or gained) aggro on a monster, and things could be going bad. But then there’s times where you’re struggling to master the timing of the Global Cooldown (GCD), which means you’re frantically hammering buttons trying to fire off abilities, and your usefulness plummets.

That’s where the music came in, Rather then trying to “snipe” the GCD so that the instant my abilities came available I was doing the next thing I was supposed to be doing, I just relaxed, and let the beat of the music take it. Since I wasn’t using my eyes to try to guess the GCD expiration, and instead was doing it to the beat, I was a lot more.. focused on what I was supposed to be doing and who doing it to. It’s like trying to rub your belly, pat your head, chew bubblegum and kick ass at the same time (yes, that’s 3 or four hands. Work with me here).  So, adding an outside music soundtrack may be of benefit to you, especially something timing based that matches up well with when you want to do something (something with a Beats Per Minute BPM thing, so you subconsciously are listening for the beat to press the button rather then watching an ability bar recharge.