I used to play a competitive multiplayer game at a fairly high level, and in the community "play to win" was the standard dogma to throw at "scrubs" who complained about what they felt were unfair tactics or exploitation of bugs or unbalanced strategies. In this particular community, this attitude reached a somewhat unpleasant magnitude and many potentially constructive concerns or reflections upon player behaviour or game balance was met with hostility. The "play to win" doctrine to some extent hampered discussion in the community and fostered a cold, hostile environment where any sign of non-competitiveness was looked down on by default.
I don't mean to extrapolate this to a larger picture, I just thought I'd share my experience with the "play to win" concept. One should keep in mind that the utility function in a computer game is extremely simple - "win" in a game actually means to win in the game. Indeed, Sirlin's point is that in a competitive game, there is only one utility. In real life, your utility function is of course going to be more complex, and might include for example other people's feelings.
In real life, your utility function is of course going to be more complex, and might include for example other people's feelings.
Which is just 'playing to win' at a somewhat higher level. 'Feelings' are far more ruthlessly competitive than most humans mange explicitly.
John F. Rizzo is an expert on losing. However, if you want to win, you would do better to seek advice from an expert on winning.
David Sirlin is such an expert, a renowned Street Fighter player and game designer. He wrote a series of articles with the title "Playing to Win", about playing competitive games at a high level, which were so popular that he expanded them into a book. You can either read it for free online (donations are appreciated) or purchase a dead tree edition.
Any further summary would simply be redundant when you could simply read Sirlin's own words, so here is the link:
http://www.sirlin.net/ptw