The philosopher C. Thi Nguyen—an expert 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.
Brilliant and wildly original ... Profound, rigorous and frequently beautiful ... Even without [the] larger argument, The Score would brim with local insights ... Socially attentive, historically literate and imbued with sensual glee. It is exuberantly eclectic.
A paean to all kinds of games, from Risk to Super Mario Bros ... Mr. Nguyen is an amusing writer ... Persuasively shows how games can illuminate the distortions of modern life—especially our tendency to mistake scores for our true purposes. But the hope that games might one day absorb humanity’s deepest conflicts underestimates how much those conflicts depend on stakes that games, by design, cannot replicate.
Nguyen is lucid, entertaining and precise, illustrating ideas with a mix of personal stories and real-world examples ... A compelling read, urgent but never alarmist ... I came away enriched and uplifted.
