Ninja's first book is not literature, it's an extension of the brand.

While I was browsing the first Ninja book – with a few words sandwiched between brilliant promotional photos and diagrams – I have the distinct impression of consuming something of the future. The book, Get Good: My ultimate guide to the game, is itself gamified; For example, it has a progress bar near the page numbers, which is similar to most online videos. The text is big and pops, as they say, and the pages are cut out with the kind of interesting graphics that you 'd usually find in the books of Urban Outfitters. Shouted across the country, congratulations to Red Bull, its main sponsor.

As a Ninja, the first famous player, Tyler Blevins played Fortnite with Drake, has earned millions of dollars in streaming on its online gameplay and has captivated a global audience. Now, Blevins has published a book that claims to help you become a better player – and by extension, a better human being – by letting players share what he has learned during his surprisingly long and robust career.

Although the book does not discuss specific details as it is a very easy way to become incredibly obsolete in a few years, it is genuinely interested in providing practical advice that aspiring Ninjas can use to take a few steps along the way. who separates them from being a professional player. This trip, however, is an itinerary that you must undertake alone; Finding an audience is as much a question of luck as skill, and no advice (or gadget) can change that.

After the dedication, the first thing to do Get Good is a letter from Blevins that exposes what the book is meant to be: "an encyclopedia, by me, for players like us." Get Good, he says, is intended to be used actively. It is presented as a reference book, which implies that play, like any other academic or serious activity, requires a certain amount of study.

Blevins positions the book like everyone else, whether it's "new" players or "grizzled veterans" – even if, reading the book, it's unclear what a veteran player could get . Get Good in the first place. Presumably, they already know the reason for getting a wired mechanical keyboard over a wireless membrane keyboard, or are not discouraged by the idea that the practice is different from the simple game. As Patricia Hernandez wrote in his article on Polygon"As a person who spends time online, much of the book was an obvious tip. If I want to improve a game, of course, I will review my game to see how I was wrong, for example. "The amount of information you can insert into a book is nothing of the magnitude and depth of what you can find online. (Depending on the subject, however, knowing if this information is a good is another matter.)

The main problem of thinking about Get Good As a book, it is not, in the traditional sense of the term, a book: although it is printed and bound with hard cover, it is more of a branded content than of the form we know as literature. This is not in itself a bad thing. Blevins is a master in extending his brand and I moved away from the book realizing that, more than anything, that is his talent; he's a great player, but he's a fantastic marketing agent. Get Good It's another way to extend one's stay in the sun: it's well-written, the advice it gives is easy to learn but hard to follow and master, and it's clear that neither Blevins Neither his Negro – the excellent game journalist Will Partin – have created anything that seems authentic. (They keep the first Sun Tzu reference a little under half of the book, which is a blessing.)

Blevins grew up an hour outside Chicago, with two older brothers and a father who enjoyed playing video games; he was hard at work and school and started taking the games seriously around the age of nine, when he started playing Halo. About ten years later, in 2009, Blevins participated in its first professional events for the game. Halo 3. He went pro; he broadcast on Twitch to a rapidly growing audience; and finally leave the Halo games for H1Z1Then for Battlefields of PlayerUnknownand finally for Fortnite. He was able to succeed wildly because he mastered what was in the book, of course, but also because he was in the right place (streaming Fortnite) at the right time (when Fortnite exploded).

Get Good has a lot of good generic tips for growing up as a person – a perfect practice makes perfect; being nice as a teammate will help you in other areas; Set reasonable and achievable goals and you could reach them – some readers will not get anywhere else, and that's commendable. But if you are looking for a serious resource to help you improve, this is not the book for you. The trajectory of Blevins towards celebrity is singular, as almost all roads of fame tend to be, and replicating what he did will not magically transform you into him.

On the other hand, if you're a parent or the kind of person who talks about what's going on with Kids These Days, maybe that's what makes you feel good. After all, Blevins is the cleanest and cleanest host that kids and parents can enjoy. to the public, he is the face of the game, and he knows it. Get Good is a Mount Olympus dispatch, which means it's for the fans. This is the kind of object that a completeist would possess, the one that indicates belonging to a tribe. It is more signifying than signified, more symbol than referent.