Are You Playing Your Own Game or Chasing Someone Else’s Score?

Picture a beautiful evening walk.

The air is soft, the sky turns gold, and your thoughts wander somewhere lovely. Then your wrist buzzes. 7,412 steps. Suddenly you are pacing the block to reach ten thousand, eyes on the number, the sunset forgotten behind you.

Who is playing that game? You, or the score?

The Score. How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game is a 2026 book by philosopher C. Thi Nguyen. Its core idea is value capture, the way simple scores like step counts, likes, rankings, and grades can quietly replace our own rich values. The book shows why scoring brings joy in games yet drains life elsewhere, and how to reclaim the game you actually want to play.

A Philosopher of Games Who Loves to Play

C. Thi Nguyen is a professor of philosophy at the University of Utah. Before that he was a food writer for the Los Angeles Times. His first book, Games. Agency as Art, won the American Philosophical Association Book Prize in 2021.

He is a rock climber, a board game lover, and one of the most joyful thinkers I have read in years. The Score came out from Penguin Press in January 2026, and it changed how I look at every number on my phone.

One Idea Holds the Whole Book Together

Your values are rich, layered, and alive. Scores are simple. When a simple score arrives, it is easy to let it quietly take the wheel.

And then the simplified versions take over.

C. Thi Nguyen, speaking on 99% Invisible, 2026

Measure what serves you, and keep your heart in charge of what matters.

12 Lessons From The Score

1. Every Score Carries Someone Else’s Values

A step count, a follower total, a sleep score, a ranking. Each one was designed by someone, for some purpose. When you adopt the score, you adopt their idea of what counts. Seeing that clearly gives you back the pen.

Every number was designed by someone. Decide whose values you want to live by.

2. Value Capture Happens Quietly, One Number at a Time

Value capture unfolds in three steps. You hold a rich, nuanced value, like health or good writing. A clean, countable version shows up. Over time, the countable version becomes the goal. Naming this pattern is the first step toward freedom.

Notice the moment a number starts steering, and gently take the wheel back.

3. Games Are the Happy Home of Scoring

In a board game or a climbing route, the score is temporary, chosen, and playful. You step into it on purpose and step back out when you are done. That is why points in a game feel like delight.

In a game you choose the rules. That choice is the whole secret of the joy.

4. Play for the Struggle, Because the Struggle Is the Gift

The book describes striving play, where you pursue a goal in order to enjoy the effort itself. Winning becomes a happy excuse for the beautiful struggle. Fly fishing, for example, is really a sport about attention.

The game is a support structure for that kind of attention.

C. Thi Nguyen, speaking on 99% Invisible, 2026

Let the goal be the excuse. Let the struggle be the joy.

5. Clarity Feels Wonderful, Which Is Why Scores Are So Tempting

Real life asks us to weigh many values at once, and that can feel heavy. A single number feels like relief. It tells you exactly how you are doing. Recognizing that appeal helps you enjoy the clarity while staying true to your deeper aims.

Clarity is a gift. Make sure it is clarity about the things you love.

6. Scores Make Us Easy to Understand

Numbers travel well. A ranking, a follower count, or a marathon time lets strangers understand you instantly. That convenience is real, and it is also only a sliver of who you are.

A number tells the world one thing about you. Your life tells the rest.

7. Institutions Turn Scores Into Rules

Inside a game, you can walk away whenever you like. Inside a school, a company, or a city, metrics can shape careers and lives. The book looks at examples like journal rankings and police statistics to show how a well meant measure can slowly reshape behavior.

A measure is a servant. Keep it working for the people it was built to serve.

8. Watch What Becomes Invisible

Whatever is easy to count gets attention. Whatever is hard to count, like kindness, curiosity, community, and joy, can fade into the background. Making a point to notice those quieter goods keeps them alive.

Life’s most precious things live beyond the data. Honor them anyway.

9. Hold Your Metrics With a Light, Knowing Smile

You can use a tracker or a goal and still keep it at a playful distance. Remind yourself what the number is for. The steps serve the health. The word count serves the story. The number is a tool in your hand.

Hold every number lightly, like a game piece you are happy to set down.

10. Design Your Own Scoring Systems

One of my favorite stories from the book is about Nguyen inviting his students to design their own grading system together. The magic was in the conversation, in deciding what they truly valued. You can do the same with your own goals. This is the spirit behind my weekly 52 Systems in 52 Weeks series.

Write your own rules, and the game becomes yours again.

11. Choose Process Over Outcome

When you design a measure for yourself, the reflection is the real reward. Asking “what do I actually care about?” changes you more than any final tally. Nguyen sums it up beautifully as “process over outcome.”

The question of what you value is worth more than any answer on a scoreboard.

12. Play Your Own Game

The book closes on joy. The point is to play more, with more freedom. Pick games you love, invent new ones, and let your life be a place where your values lead and the numbers follow. I explored this same wholehearted focus in Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing.

Your life is the one game where you get to write every rule.

Science Agrees That Counting Can Change the Joy

In a set of six experiments, Duke researcher Jordan Etkin asked people to color, walk, and read, while some of them tracked their progress. The trackers did more. They walked farther and read more pages. They also enjoyed the activities less, and afterward chose to keep going less often. You can read about the research in Why Counting Your Steps Could Make You Unhappier, from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business.

That is value capture, measured. The number boosted the output and dimmed the delight. The beautiful news is that awareness puts the choice back in your hands.

Your Practice for Today. The Score Audit

Take ten minutes with a notebook.

1. List every number that shaped your mood this week. Steps, likes, sleep score, inbox count, bank balance.
2. Next to each, write the deeper value it was meant to serve.
3. Circle one where the number has started leading the value.
4. Choose a gentle reset. Hide the counter for a week, check it once a day, or replace it with a question like “did I feel rested?”
5. Do one thing today purely for the joy of it, and keep zero record of it.

Then enjoy your walk. The sunset is the point.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is The Score by C. Thi Nguyen about?

The Score. How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game (2026) by C. Thi Nguyen explores how scoring systems like metrics, rankings, and likes shape what we value, why scores feel joyful in games and draining in life, and how to reclaim our own values.

What is value capture?

Value capture is C. Thi Nguyen’s term for what happens when a simplified, quantified version of a value, like a step count or a ranking, gradually replaces the richer value it was meant to represent.

What is striving play?

Striving play means taking on a goal in order to enjoy the struggle of pursuing it. The win becomes a reason to play, while the real reward is the absorbing effort itself.

Who is C. Thi Nguyen?

C. Thi Nguyen is a philosopher at the University of Utah who studies games, technology, and value. He is a former Los Angeles Times food writer and the author of Games. Agency as Art, winner of the 2021 American Philosophical Association Book Prize.

When was The Score published?

The Score was published by Penguin Press on January 13, 2026, and runs 368 pages.

How can I avoid value capture in daily life?

Remember what each metric is for, hold numbers lightly, design your own measures based on what you truly care about, and regularly do things purely for joy with zero tracking.

The Sunset Is the Point

Remember that evening walk?

Picture it again. Your wrist buzzes, and you smile. You glance up instead. The sky is gold, the air is soft, and you walk home slowly, wherever the evening leads.

Same walk. Your game.

Play your own game today.

Complement this with 52 Systems in 52 Weeks, Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing, and How to Stop Doomscrolling and Start Paying Attention to Your Own Life.

If this spoke to you, I would love to keep you company each week. Join us here.

With love, Paolo

Sources

• C. Thi Nguyen, The Score. How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game (Penguin Press, 2026), Google Books
• The Score, Wikipedia
• C. Thi Nguyen, Wikipedia
• The Score, 99% Invisible episode transcript
• Review of The Score, Kirkus Reviews
• Etkin, J. (2016). The Hidden Cost of Personal Quantification. Journal of Consumer Research, summarized by Duke Fuqua Insights