The Score
How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jan 13, 2026
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A philosophy of games to help us win back control over what we value
The philosopher C. Thi Nguyen—one of the leading experts on the philosophy of games and the philosophy of data—takes us deep into the heart of games, and into the depths of bureaucracy, to see how scoring systems shape our desires.
Games are the most important art form of our era. They embody the spirit of free play. They show us the subtle beauty of action everywhere in life in video games, sports, and boardgames—but also cooking, gardening, fly-fishing, and running. They remind us that it isn’t always about outcomes, but about how glorious it feels to be doing the thing. And the scoring systems help get us there, by giving us new goals to try on.
Scoring systems are also at the center of our corporations and bureaucracies—in the form of metrics and rankings. They tell us exactly how to measure our success. They encourage us to outsource our values to an external authority. And they push on us to value simple, countable things. Metrics don’t capture what really matters; they only capture what’s easy to measure. The price of that clarity is our independence.
The Score asks us is this the game you really want to be playing?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Score-keeping fosters creativity in games, but in real-life institutions it makes for rigid policies and distorts values, according to this trenchant philosophical investigation. University of Utah philosophy professor Nguyen (Games) explores scoring systems in games and sports, from difficulty rankings in rock climbing to idiosyncratic point schedules for fantasy role-playing games. Such score-keeping structures, he argues, create "background conditions" that enable players to creatively problem-solve and foster more captivating forms of play. Institutions, on the other hand, rely on scoring systems with simplistic data metrics that are easily measurable but often flatten value complexity, driving policy in unproductive ways. (College rankings, for example, boost the scores of schools with high rejection rates, prompting many to solicit applications from unqualified students to have more applicants to reject.) The author considers various solutions, ultimately suggesting that large institutions (and their flawed metrics) are necessary to help society remain organized and fuel big-picture initiative but that areas like art, fitness, or hobbies should be subject to flexible value systems dictated by individuals and small communities. Illustrating his ideas with lucid philosophy and descriptions of his own innumerable hobbies (Tetris, bouldering, yo-yo), Nguyen skillfully explores the ways in which humans think about progress, creativity, and play. It makes for a captivating look at how imperfect measures of success shape society.
