'Lucid, entertaining and precise... a brilliant warning about the gamification of everyday life' Tim Clare, Guardian
Is this the game you want to be playing?
Scoring systems are everywhere. Underpinning our daily lives - whether it's the fit bits on our wrists, likes on social media, and even school rankings - they have become pervasive and increasingly dangerous, warping our desires and outsourcing our values to external institutions. Instead of encouraging us to be more playful, to take pleasure in the journey of striving towards a goal, institutions, corporations and bureaucracies weaponize scoring systems to impose their own interests. No matter what, we always seem to be playing by someone else's rules.
In The Score, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen shows us how this newly 'gamified' world has fundamentally captured our value systems, turning what might be moral or personal life choices into numerical data, and forcing us to prioritise what can be measured and monetized over what is truly meaningful to us.
A life-long lover of online and board games himself, Nguyen argues that we should not stop playing games but rather take a step back and become more aware of their immersive and profound power, so that we might chart a way towards more creative and joyful lives. To start playing our own game.
| ISBN: | 9780241653975 |
| Publication date: | 13th January 2026 |
| Author: | C Thi Nguyen |
| Publisher: | Allen Lane an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 368 pages |
| Genres: |
Game theory Popular philosophy: Meaning of life / finding sense in life Popular psychology Impact of science and technology on society |
'Lucid, entertaining and precise... a brilliant warning about the gamification of everyday life' Tim Clare, Guardian
Is this the game you want to be playing?
Scoring systems are everywhere. Underpinning our daily lives - whether it's the fit bits on our wrists, likes on social media, and even school rankings - they have become pervasive and increasingly dangerous, warping our desires and outsourcing our values to external institutions. Instead of encouraging us to be more playful, to take pleasure in the journey of striving towards a goal, institutions, corporations and bureaucracies weaponize scoring systems to impose their own interests. No matter what, we always seem to be playing by someone else's rules.
In The Score, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen shows us how this newly 'gamified' world has fundamentally captured our value systems, turning what might be moral or personal life choices into numerical data, and forcing us to prioritise what can be measured and monetized over what is truly meaningful to us.
A life-long lover of online and board games himself, Nguyen argues that we should not stop playing games but rather take a step back and become more aware of their immersive and profound power, so that we might chart a way towards more creative and joyful lives. To start playing our own game.
The Score features in the following genres: Game theory, Popular philosophy: Meaning of life / finding sense in life, Popular psychology, Impact of science and technology on society
The Score is available in Paperback, Hardback
The Score was written by C Thi Nguyen and published by Allen Lane an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd
The Score has 368 pages
£22.50