Ok, we all know the best way to get good at 99% of things is to hire a teacher or enroll in a school for it. So, if you already have an esports coach or are already in a program for it, congratulations, you are already doing the best thing you could do to get better. You are not the audience for this article. Now, to all those who want to learn how to get better at video games without spending a dime on coaching, welcome my fellow cheapskates. This is a list of some of the best free educational resources out there, and the goal is to help you get better at Esports for free. Let’s get it.
First off, I want to mention some asides that aren’t included in the main article because they are only a good resource for 1 or 2 games.
Steam Workshop: Steam has a bunch of good training challenges for Rocket League. Check out the dribble challenge and bakkesmod. Both are great for improving.
Skill Capped: Great videos covering every aspect of League of Legends and Valorant. The videos are behind a paywall, but you can take advantage of their 30-day money-back with no questions asked policy and get a month of quality learning.
Gamepressure.com
If you are looking at getting better for free, you may be a beginner. This one goes out to all the noobs. Gamepressure.com is a great site for beginners. Simply search for the game you are looking for and discover all the basics about it. I like this site for getting better at Valorant, Fortnite, and Rocket League. For Valorant, they’ve got in-depth map guides for callouts and tips for each of Valorant’s maps. Additionally, they have basic explanations of the economy, game modes, team play/communication, best crosshair settings, agents, tier list for best defensive and offensive agents, etc. For Rocket League, it has guides with videos on Aerials, dribbling, passing, etc. And this is what the site is mostly focused on for all games, the basics. It’s great if you are just getting into a game. If you are wondering, what’s the best agent to start with for Valorant, why everyone is always faster than you in Rocket League, or what the best weapon for you is in Fortnite, this is the site for you. Read up on all the basic strategies and then move on to the other free resources.
Check out the site here: ,https://guides.gamepressure.com/
Gamersrdy.com
Here is a resource that will help you at the beginning and intermediate levels of learning to get better at a game. Gamersrdy.com provides content for Valorant, CounterStrike, Rocket League, and Fortnite. While they do require payment for courses and coaching in these games, their guides are 100% free and a great resource for players struggling with mid-level tactics. Most of the guides at Gamersrdy.com are written by the coaches that work for the site. Due to this and the fact that the site is solely focused on four games, the majority of the guides offer deep insights, are well written, and get straight to the learning objectives. Videos and pictures are often included to help visual learners understand what is being taught. Guides are a good split between basics and advanced tactics, which means at several stages in your improvement this site has something to offer.
Website Link: ,GamersRdy | Improve with Courses, Coaching, and Community
Twitch.tv
Twitch can be an amazing place to learn a game or it can be a big waste of time. It’s always nice when you can be entertained and learn at the same time. Ideally, the content provides these two things simultaneously and in equal measure. That can sometimes be the case while watching professionals or just really good players play games on Twitch. Depending on the game, you can pick up a lot by watching someone better than you play and emulating their movements/strategies. However, I would say the majority of streamers’ content on Twitch is for entertainment, not education. Professionals esport athletes often stream to make side income, and though they might interact with chat, they rarely explain their thinking or reasoning behind their decisions. And non-professional streamers often gear more towards entertaining chat than informing them as that tends to bring in more viewers. So, there is a limit to how much you can pick up. Twitch is great for picking up the basics and a few in-depth tips and tricks. But it is rarely the place to pick up high-level strategy and learn advanced gameplay. That being said, how much you learn from watching Twitch depends entirely upon the stream that you watch and the game you are trying to learn (games that require a large amount of strategic thinking or micro-management are harder to pick up here). My advice is to search online for the most educational streamers for the esport you are wanting to learn.
Gamerzclass.com
This is a really interesting website that I thought I’d mention because of its uniqueness among the resources out there. Gamerzclass provides video courses taught by pro players for FIFA, Rocket League, CS:Go, League of Legends, and DOTA 2. There are very few useful guides on the site and no coaching as of yet, but I don’t need to explain why videos of pros diving into the specifics and reasoning behind their play are immensely valuable. Unfortunately, you can watch about 2 minutes of their videos before you hit a subscription wall, so why is this on the list? Well, two reasons. If you create a free profile on their site, you are awarded 3 tokens which you can use to unlock 3 full videos on their site. These 3 videos you get to watch for free can be extremely educational if you know exactly what you want to learn. The second reason is that they often run free trials where you can have access to everything for a few days, and if you budget your time well, a few days could be all you need to watch or save a lot of very educational videos.
P.S. Since I am not here trying to be your moral compass but am here helping you get better for free, if you want to game the system, you can continue to make free accounts with different email addresses. That way you can unlock a good number of the videos you might want to see without hitting a paywall.
Website Link: ,https://gamerzclass.com/
YouTube.com
Um, duh. Literally, for any esport you want to learn, YouTube has to be near the top of the list of free educational resources. The site makes it easy to navigate toward educational videos and away from the ones made solely to entertain. So, we don’t run into the same problems as we do on Twitch. Many streamers on Twitch have YouTube channels that are much more informative than their streams. If you already have a favorite streamer but their videos aren’t teaching you much anymore, check out their YouTube content to see if it's more informative. Anyway, since YouTube is so popular and used by everyone, I don’t have to explain the upsides. Instead, I’ll list some of the more educational YouTubers for several esport games and maybe help you avoid getting lost in the proverbial entertainment weeds of the site.
League of Legends: Coach Curtis and Neace. Both have multiple channels of content.
,Coach Curtis - YouTube - covers the mid-lane extremely in-depth, and his content is totally for education.
,NEACE - YouTube - covers all roles and is a good mix of both entertainment and education.
Fortnite: Itsjerian and The Gamer Couple (TGC)
,itsJerian - YouTube – covers a broad scope of tips and tricks for Fortnite. Some of his content is pure entertainment. But his other content is a mix of entertainment and education, and it's largely done well.
,TGC - YouTube – like itsJerian, the TGC covers a good range of building techniques and tips for improving quickly. They are lesser-known, but their content is pretty much all educational, which guarantees that your time won’t be wasted.
Valorant: Ron Rambo Kim (former pro and fps coach). A good place to learn strategy and improve aiming.
,Ron Rambo Kim - YouTube – covers settings, agent guides, and gameplay breakdown.
Rocket League: Wayton Pilkin and Yukeo
,Wayton Pilkin - YouTube – step-by-step tutorials on how to do everything from ceiling shots to air dribbles to choosing the perfect car. Purely educational and very straightforward.
,Yukeo - YouTube – mostly gameplay, but he is very good at explaining his thinking and what he wants to do or should do while playing.
Plug into the Community
The only thing that could beat an informative video explained by a professional is getting to ask questions, have them answered, and play alongside someone who knows what you want to learn. Getting into the community is the number one free resource for getting better at games. If you play with someone who seems nice, make friends. Eventually, you will meet somebody a lot better than you. You can ask them to play against you or watch you and tell you what you are doing wrong. Having a more skilled friend teach you can be humbling, but it’s also probably as close as you’ll get to a coach without paying. Making friends is easier for some than others, but not to worry, there are plenty of free options for plugging into the community. Jumping into a Discord or Reddit group is a great way to start. Join in on or start conversations about how to improve, and keep your eye out for skilled players who might be willing to give you advice or play against you.
Regardless of which of these free resources you decide to use, the most important thing to remember when learning a game is to be patient with your learning. Getting better at things takes time. Sometimes it takes a lot of time. Most of that time involves sucking at what we want to get better at and consistently learning from our mistakes. Oh, and also, play. Don’t get so sucked up in learning the strategy and advanced tips that you forget to just get a whole bunch of playing in. If you keep a level head and record and review your games, oftentimes playing more of the game is what will make you better at it. It’s a free resource, and it’s the one that’s the most fun.
Find out more about getting involved with Vanta Leagues on our page for gamers.
Garrett White lives in Houston Texas with the most amazing woman in the world, his wife. Any time he isn’t running D&D, playing video games, or reading a book, he is writing short stories and articles about one of those things.