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by aptimpropriety 4781 days ago
An analogy that comes to mind - physical exercise. When you are stopped doing exercise (e.g. running at a traffic light), people often will jog in place. Obvious reasons - keep heart rate from large deltas, muscles warm/responding well, etc.

If you watch competitive PC gaming, you will notice that even professional gamers will often 'spam' their hotkeys in low activity periods, typically the beginning of games. Some people claim that it is simply for actions-per-minute stats, but I could see it as some kind of setting of mental/physical cadence.
2 comments
ArikBe 4781 days ago
I don't think that the analogy holds. Jogging in place is to maintain movement and keeping the body warm so that it's easier to continue running when you can run.

Spamming before a round starts is done in order to fire off an action before your opponent or just as soon as possible.

Neither scenario is analogous to a non-responsive software application because everything is in fact responsive. If the stop light is red, then that's temporary, it is in fact the whole purpose of the signal. Only if the light hangs for an abnormally long amount of time do people get nervous. In the game scenario, there's usually a countdown to the round starting, so again nothing is frozen.

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Dylan16807 4780 days ago
No, not before a round starts. For a concrete example, in starcraft all you normally do in the first minute is build up your worker supply and make 1-2 buildings, maybe send a scout. But you'll see players hitting hotkeys to view their base, no view over here, no view the base, now use the mouse to select all the workers, now do it again 7 times, now give this one ten move orders to the same spot as fast as you can click... They're not trying to get an action done faster, they're not even hitting keys that do anything, they're just constantly spamming input.
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mnarayan01 4781 days ago
In as much as it has any real purpose, I would say spamming hot keys is more about making sure your hands/controllers are properly positioned. And then making sure of it again. And again.

Also, given the above, spamming hot keys is just about the only physical action you can take using your hands to expend nervous/bored energy.

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prawks 4781 days ago
Agreed. Think of it like an American football punter doing high-kicks before a punt.
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