{"product_id":"the-score-isbn-9780593655658","title":"The Score","description":"\u003cb\u003e“Mind-expanding . . . \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e is so exuberant and readable that the depth and seriousness of its insights almost sneak up on you.” —Jennifer Szalai, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Brilliant and wildly original . . . \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e is socially attentive, historically literate and imbued with sensual glee.” —Becca Rothfeld, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“I give this excellent book five stars.”\u003ci\u003e —\u003c\/i\u003eStuart Jeffries,\u003ci\u003e Financial Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eA philosophy of games to help us win back control over what we value\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGames 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eScoring 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e asks us is this the game you really want to be playing?“[\u003ci\u003eThe Score \u003c\/i\u003eis a] mind-expanding exploration of the philosophy of games . . . so exuberant and readable that the depth and seriousness of its insights almost sneak up on you.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Games work because they have scores, which tell us what to aim for and which player won. Yet the very sorts of scoring systems that enable riffing and invention on a board tend to stifle us when they are applied in institutional contexts . . . So argues the brilliant and wildly original philosopher C. Thi Nguyen in his new book, \u003ci\u003eThe Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game\u003c\/i\u003e. This subtitle, with its whiff of self-help and didacticism, sells Nguyen’s profound, rigorous and frequently beautiful book short . . . \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e has an ambitious mission. It seeks to explain why the constraints imposed by scoring systems in games are so liberating, while the constraints imposed by institutional metrics are so deadening. In doing so, it aspires to explain a quintessential contemporary tragedy: the extent to which optimization has gutted our lives. Even without this larger argument, \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e would brim with local insights. Nguyen is a connoisseur of games, and his musings about them are ingenious and entertaining . . . Quite anomalously for a work of philosophy, \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e is socially attentive, historically literate and imbued with sensual glee. It is exuberantly eclectic, full of passionate digressions into the history of algorithms or the nature of classification systems or the workings of skateboarding competitions . . . All this would make the book well worth reading even without its argumentative pièce de résistance, its inspired comparison of games and institutional metrics.” \u003cb\u003e—Becca Rothfeld, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“In [Nguyen's] previous book, \u003ci\u003eGames: Agency as Art\u003c\/i\u003e—a philosophical smash hit, which won the American Philosophical Association’s Book Prize, in 2021—he argued that games let us 'flirt' with different 'modes of agency' . . . In \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e, Nguyen extends these ideas. Games, he writes, can train us to focus on value, by teaching us 'the distinction between goals and purposes.’”\u003cb\u003e —Joshua Rothman,\u003ci\u003e The New Yorker\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Nguyen is lucid, entertaining and precise . . . \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e is a compelling read, urgent but never alarmist. For Nguyen, wonder, absorption and play are central to human flourishing . . . I came away enriched and uplifted.” \u003cb\u003e—Tim Clare, \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Quirky and enthusiastic . . . In \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e, Nguyen . . . combines an enthusiast’s celebration of games’ inner workings with a lament for the power of metrics to flatten our lives and capture our values . . . Nguyen helps us see how games transform instincts into something beautiful, valuable and meditative. . . Nguyen is engaging in his criticisms, with clear-voiced popularizations of sociology, history and philosophy . . . \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e shows how to be more alert to the insidious ways metrics operate in narrower arenas, from law-school applications to any-wine-but-a-fruity-cabernet taste-making. It also sharpens our appreciation of the meditative joy and interior meaning games can offer.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBloomberg\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Like a latter-day Socrates . . . [Nguyen] advocat[es] a kind of playful rebellion against rules and metrics. I’m more cynical: I suspect the evisceration of our values by scoring systems will continue . . . I would love to be proved wrong. In the meantime, I give this excellent book five stars.” \u003cb\u003e—Stuart Jeffries, \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eFinancial Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“This is one of the coolest philosophy books I have read in years. It changed not just how I think about games, but how I think about damn near everything. How I think about life, really. And that's because the book is using games as a way to interrogate what actually matters in life, or maybe what should matter in life.” \u003cb\u003e—Sean Illing, The Gray Area podcast\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The best thing about \u003ci\u003eThe Score \u003c\/i\u003eis it articulates in a new way something I've known for a while: that despite our society's constant need for data, the best things in life are unquantifiable. But Nguyen reminds us, by example, to make room for joy . . . [Nguyen's] enthusiasm and his delight are infectious. He is the perfect guide to show us how important it is to experience the joy in \u003ci\u003eplaying\u003c\/i\u003e the game.”\u003ci\u003e —\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eMaris Kreizman, \u003ci\u003eThe Maris Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e isn’t just clearer and more engaging than Nguyen’s previous work—it’s also more expansive. [Nguyen] has clearly spent time ruminating on his subject, on games and gamification, such that it’s now much bigger than he realised before . . . [it is] a text that manages to be both conversational and poetic.”\u003ci\u003e —\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003ePeter Hoskin, \u003ci\u003eProspect\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“And the final book is a book by C. Thi Nguyen that has just come out called \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e. I don’t even know how to begin to describe this book. It is about making pizza. It is about games. It is about the big structures that shape our lives and how they don’t recognize the knowledge and the wonder and the intimacy that we have together. And it pulls together many disparate things into this incredibly compelling narrative. It is just a ridiculously beautiful book. We live in times when it’s very easy to just feel unhappy and despairing, and I think that this is a book that brings back joy.” \u003cb\u003e—Henry Farrell, SNF Agora Professor of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins and author of \u003ci\u003eUnderground Empire\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“If we truly want to understand our civic plight\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003eand not just tick off some talking points\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003ethen we should read \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e. We’ll find that Nguyen has planned this particular long way round with skill.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Telegraph\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I pay [\u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e] the highest compliment. It made me stare off into the middle distance a lot . . . Why didn’t I realize this until I read [this] book? Why didn’t I see this in the way that [Nguyen sees] it so clearly?” \u003cb\u003e—Pablo Torre, \u003ci\u003ePablo Torre Finds Out\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] trenchant philosophical investigation . . . Illustrating his ideas with lucid philosophy and descriptions of his own innumerable hobbies (\u003ci\u003eTetris\u003c\/i\u003e, 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.” —\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e (starred review)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Delightfully irreverent . . . [\u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e offers] an engaging look at the games we play and whatever freedom we might have as we do so.”\u003cb\u003e —\u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“One of the most exciting non-fiction titles of 2026.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e —\u003c\/i\u003eMatt D’Ancona, \u003ci\u003eThe New World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The parts in which [Nguyen is] . . . enjoying himself are quite beautiful. There are, and I mean this sincerely, several meditative passages about yo-yoing, and the mastery of certain yo-yo tricks that contain 'an ouroboros of play' . . . . I would read a whole book about this, and I would feel alive at the end.” \u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eHarper’s\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“As a long-time fan of games, I was delighted to find a philosophical look at how we make choices in life. If you love gaming, this is the best book on the topic you’ll ever find.” —\u003cb\u003eSteve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“One of the most clever and revealing books I have read in a long time. It genuinely changed how I think.”\u003cb\u003e —Johann Hari, author of \u003ci\u003eStolen Focus\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eChasing the Scream\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“You wouldn't expect that careful thinking about games and how they work would produce bracing new insights about how powerful forces reach in and modify our values without our even noticing, and what we can do about it, but that's because you haven't read C. Thi Nguyen's \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e. You probably should.” \u003cb\u003e—Jordan Ellenberg, author of \u003ci\u003eHow Not to Be Wrong\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I do not care about games. Or at least, I didn't think that I did. But I was riveted from start to finish by THE SCORE, which made me rethink my relationship with my health, my bank account, and even my writing, in this moment of increasing gamification via substack. Such is the power and scope of this brilliant and timely book.” —\u003cb\u003eKate Manne, author of \u003ci\u003eDown Girl\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Almost everything you do at work, at home, and in even in your relationships, has been turned into a game with scores that supposedly show how well you’re doing it. And yet, you probably feel punished rather than rewarded by all those measures. \u003ci\u003eThe Score \u003c\/i\u003eexplains why and how you can wrest yourself free of the bad games that have captured you.” —\u003cb\u003eIan Bogost, Professor of Film \u0026amp; Media Studies and Computer Science \u0026amp; Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis and designer of the game \u003ci\u003eCow Clicker\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e isn't an instruction manual for life; it's something deeper. It teaches you to rewrite the rules, so you can live the way that suits you. Thi Nguyen is a mad genius, sharing the secret sauce to his cool.” —\u003cb\u003eScott Hershovitz, author of \u003ci\u003eNasty, Brutish, and Short\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This is a book about the quantitative vs. the qualitative: what happens to our sense of humanity when we submit to institutional demands that reduce the world to a set of rules? \u003ci\u003eThe Score \u003c\/i\u003eis a call to reconnect with play—in our leisure time, in our experience of art, and in how we interact with friends and loved ones. And that sounds like fun to me.” —\u003cb\u003eEric Zimmerman, founding faculty and Arts Professor at the NYU Game Center\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“There are certain concepts that, once they’re explained to you, you start to see \u003ci\u003eeverywhere\u003c\/i\u003e. Thi Nguyen’s notion of \u003ci\u003evalue capture\u003c\/i\u003e is exactly this kind of idea—it’s deceptively simple but profoundly insightful. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. This book beautifully encapsulates Nguyen’s thinking on the relationship between our values, our goals, and the metrics by which we measure ourselves and others. Nguyen is one of the rare academics who can render a complex theory accessible and engaging without dumbing it down. The net result is an outstanding piece of philosophy that experts and non-experts can both enjoy. But consider yourself warned: you might not be able to stop thinking about it either.” \u003cb\u003e—Elizabeth Barnes, author of \u003ci\u003eHealth Problems\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Superb philosophy, beautifully written, lovely insights, and gripping in its presentation.” \u003cb\u003e—Sanford Goldberg, Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eC. Thi Nguyen \u003c\/b\u003eis associate professor of philosophy at the University of Utah, and a specialist in the philosophy of games, the philosophy of technology, and the theory of value. A former food writer for the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e, Nguyen is active in public philosophy, writing for \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e The Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e New Statesman\u003c\/i\u003e, and elsewhere.","brand":"Penguin Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233739256037,"sku":"NP9780593655658","price":32.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593655658.jpg?v=1767741364","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-score-isbn-9780593655658","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}