The Score

‘Games offer me the joys of complete absorption in a precise, well-defined world… and within those strictures, I find freedom.’

Scoring systems are everywhere. They underpin our daily lives – from social media to education and health – they have become pervasive and increasingly dangerous, warping our desires and outsourcing our values to external institutions. Scores are instructional manuals for behaviour. Instead of encouraging us to be more playful, to take pleasure in the journey of striving towards a goal, institutions weaponize scoring to impose their own interests.

In The Score, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen shows us how games and their scoring systems, such as likes on social media or university rankings, have fundamentally changed our value systems, prioritising what can be measured and monetized over what is truly meaningful to us.

In this love-letter to the immersive and profound power of games, Nguyen charts a way we might be able to break free from these constraints to lead more creative and joyful lives. To start playing our own game.