The rulebook for the human game was never written… so I wrote it.
Robert Dawson is a retired clinical psychologist who spent more than forty years listening to people describe the wonderfully inventive ways humans complicate their own lives.
He eventually realised the problem wasn’t that people were broken — it was that nobody had bothered to hand out a rulebook for the human game.
So he started writing one.
The Human Game Series grew from a lifetime of noticing that most people don’t need deep insight delivered from a mountaintop — they just need a few clean, practical plays they can use the next time someone pushes their buttons, crosses a boundary, or makes a family gathering feel like a contact sport.
Robert lives on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, where he divides his time between writing, riding motorcycles, sea-kayaking, and attempting (with mixed results) to follow his own advice.
He dedicates every book to Stella, who keeps him grounded, laughing, and mostly pointed in the right direction.
“You don’t need to be perfect. You just need cleaner plays.”
The mission
At Play Dirty, Stay Clean, the mission is to help people make better moves in a world that doesn't always play fair
-and do do it without losing their kindness, their strength or their edge.
These books offer practical steps for staying steady, staying decent, and staying clean when life gets messy.
The vision
A world where self-awareness and integrity are not weaknesses, but superpowers.
A world where people understand the forces that shape them, use that insight wisely, and act with courage and compassion even in unfair systems.
Play Dirty, Stay Clean aims to build a global community of clear thinkers and strong hearts — people who win the human game without losing their soul.