The Score cover art

The Score

How to Stop Playing Someone Else’s Game
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The Score

By: C. Thi Nguyen
Narrated by: C. Thi Nguyen
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

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.

'This is the best book on the topic you’ll ever find' Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple
© C. Thi Nguyen 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

 Consciousness & Thought Mathematics Personal Development Personal Success Philosophy Society

Critic reviews

Delightfully irreverent... An engaging look at the games we play and whatever freedom we might have as we do so
[A] trenchant philosophical investigation…. 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
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 (Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple)
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 (Kate Manne, author of Down Girl )
One of the most clever and revealing books I have read in a long time. It genuinely changed how I think (Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus )
There are certain concepts that, once they’re explained to you, you start to see everywhere. Thi Nguyen’s notion of value capture 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 (Elizabeth Barnes, author of Health Problems )
The Score 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 (Scott Hershovitz, author of Nasty, Brutish, and Short )
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. The Score explains why and how you can wrest yourself free of the bad games that have captured you. (Ian Bogost, Professor of Film & Media Studies and Computer Science & Engineering at Washington University)
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