“Playing to Win Overview”, 2006 (; backlinks):
[Summary of game designer & former Street Fighter player David Sirlin’s book on the psychology of competition, Playing to Win.
Sirlin diagnoses one of the most problematic mindsets as that of the “scrub”: the scrub is not just a bad player, they are a bad player who refuses to get better and takes pride in not getting better, in pretending as if parts of the game did not exist and any player who plays differently is immoral for doing so and they are to blame for the scrub losing. A scrub is self-handicapping, self-sabotaging, and can never get better because that would violate their made-up fantasy rules.
Aside from ensuring that they will predictably keep losing, scrubs typically are playing a far inferior & less fun game: their imaginary rules typically ban mechanics which are critical parts of balancing the game-design—every move should have an equal and opposite move, to create a rock-paper-scissors dynamic. As new subtleties are discovered, new tactics and strategies evolve, in an ever shifting landscape of expertise. If there was simply one ‘right’ move, that would be boring and allow for no skill. (As game designer Sid Meier has famously said in a variety of ways, “Games are a series of meaningful choices.”)
This can apply to life in general: those who will do what it takes to reach their goals (whatever those may be), and scrubs, who won’t because of imagined scruples and insistence on being handed success on a silver platter and will resentfully blame everyone but themselves for their failure.]
If you play in such a way as to maximize your chance of winning, it means abusing everything “cheap” that you can. It means frustrating the opponent, using bugs, and anything else you can think of that’s legal to do. When all this comes together, it gives you a deeper kind of fun than is possible at lower skill levels.
…It’s also totally fine to mess around with no intention of ever becoming really good. You don’t have to try to be the best at every game you play. I certainly don’t try that, it would be exhausting. But when I see someone else trying to be the best, I admire it, rather than condemn it. If that makes the game fall apart, I hold the game developer responsible, not the player.
But if you want to win—if that’s your intention—then you need to leave behind whatever mental baggage you have that would prevent you from making the moves that actually help you win. By doing that and practicing and learning, you can walk the path of continuous self-improvement that Playing to Win is really about.
View HTML: