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Games With A High
Skill-Ceiling
 

This is our list of video games where you can continue improving for many years of play. We don't think that excelling in a video game is in the same category as learning a new language, singing or becoming a doctor. It's no surprise, there are a lot of reasons that these are very different pursuits. However, we generally misunderstand how much skill, knowledge, intuition, theory and expertise (amongst other things) are required to be the best at a specific game. Video games have a far higher skill ceiling than it seems.

Video games appear to be mechanical challenges like mowing the lawn. You can get good at mowing the lawn, but after a few weeks of practice, there's not much room for further improvement. However, even a simple mechanical game like Tetris offers almost unending opportunities to improve for years and years. Even mechanically basic video games offer space for the player to improve not only their button pressing speed and accuracy but deftness, strategy, prioritisation and systems thinking.

There are some games that lean into this ability to offer this almost unending opportunity for improvement. They offer more space for the player to find new ways to achieve their goals and offer environments with the flexibility to encourage players to incrementally improve these strategies.
 
This list includes 48 games from the last 34 years, with 2,093 likes. They come from a range of different genres and play-styles and are all good games if you want to be world champion. We break them down into the following areas:

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Art of Rally is a racing game that focuses on stylised off-road motion from the creator of Absolute Drift.

Art of Rally is a racing game that focuses on stylised off-road motion from the creator of Absolute Drift. Slide through the hand-crafted stages set in Finland, Japan and Spain with varying weather and time of day.

Taming Gaming Book Written by parents for parents, the database complements the in-depth discussion about video game addiction, violence, spending and online safety in the Taming Gaming book. We are an editorially independent, free resource without adverts that is supported by partnerships.

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