"Player Skills"

I'm defining "player skills" to be any ability that allows the player to excel at a game and is attributed to the player (e.g., reflexes). I think it's important to analyze and think about which "player skill" we want to be in the game so that it can guide us in our design decisions.

I'm going to organize the categories as I think is best, defining and separating concepts that I think deserves separate attention even if there are similarities. If there are other categories (which there probably are) that you believe should be listed, then please share them.

• Tracking (Past Events) - this is defined as in the case of poker, where the player keeps track of which cards has been drawn.

• Spatial Awareness - that is, awareness of what's going on in the surroundings. For example, in Bomberman you needed to be aware of where all of the bombs are and which tiles are affected as a result.

• Wisdom/Knowledge - knowledge of the game logic/rules. (e.g., knowing the priorities of attacks in certain situations, such as an uppercut will beat a normal kick).
  

• Foresight - think ahead about which events will occur and which events could occur.

• Multitasking/Management - managing and switching between multiple separate tasks.

• Reflexes/Reaction Time - speed to react to an event.

• Speed of Physical Execution - (e.g., rate of button presses.)

• Speed of Mental Processing - (e.g., solving a puzzle by quickly thinking through all possible combinations.)

• Pattern Recognition - recognize spatial/temporal patterns. (e.g., patterns to form combos or opponent's movement patterns, etc.)
  

• Coordination - The ability to execute the player's intention. For example, hand-eye coordination.
  

• Estimation - (e.g., estimate the distance of a projectile or time of an event)

1. Timing - timing exactly when a specific event will occur. (e.g., timing when a bomb will explode).
2. Distancing - (e.g., in Street Fighter, advanced players will keep certain distances from the other character, for example to make sure that the other character won't be able to do a kick attack in range.)
   

• Guessing - it's not really any ability a person has, but people tend to attribute it to themselves when they guess correctly. (e.g., consider the concept of betting/gambling, which involves choosing not only what to bet on, but also how much to bet).
  

With each of the above categories, also consider how the following related concepts can be applied to them:

• Breadth vs Depth -
  
• Accuracy vs Precision - Accuracy is defined to be the closeness to a goal/target. Precision is defined to be the consistency in multiple results, even if it's not close to the goal/target.
  
• Spatial & Temporal - (i.e., physical space and time)

Edit: We should probably consider other categorizations too. That is, we may want to look at more specific or higher levels of categorization of 'player skills' (e.g., forming complex combos in a fighting game is considered a player skill).