Why you should read Playing to Win by David Sirlin | Robert Heaton
Playing to Win is a no-nonsense guide to how the best video-game players in the world become so good, and why the worst video-game players in the world are incapable of improving. This is a more mainstream subject than you might assume. There are many common elements in the development and nurturing of an all-consuming obsession in any competitive discipline, whether it be Ice Hockey or Streetfighter. When David Sirlin describes how and why he practices maneuvering his VirtuaFighter character to single-pixel precision, he is also describing many of the exact same motivations and mindsets that got Tiger Woods, Wayne Rooney and LeBron James to where they are today. Except with joysticks instead of golf clubs and video arcades instead of Madison Square Gardens.
Playing to Win is the book that Roger Federer would write if he wasn’t already richer than God and didn’t wear tracksuits embroidered with his own initials onto them.
