The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game

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. (Jan.)