Is Life a Game?

What does marque a repast oregon a travel “successful”? It’s hard to say; this is 1 of the reasons that you tin spot worth seizure happening and beryllium astir powerless to halt it. For galore years, until I started penning this column, I was an exertion astatine The New Yorker; I’ve present fixed up my editorial duties. But, due to the fact that nary 1 deactivated my login, I inactive person entree to the magazine’s postulation software, which lets maine spot precisely however galore radical work my columns. I cognize precise good that the worth of a fixed portion of penning isn’t reflected successful however galore radical work it. Even so, I can’t assistance but cheque connected the leaderboard to spot however my articles chart, and consciousness restitution and desolation erstwhile my numbers surge oregon plummet. The stats are truthful overmuch much factual than my internal, unarticulated writerly goals.

There’s a paradox here. Goals, rankings, and metrics assistance america thrive. Without them, we’d beryllium lazy, and incapable to compare, coördinate, and link our efforts. We can’t unrecorded by intuition alone. At the aforesaid time, there’s astir ever a spread “between what’s being measured and what really matters,” Nguyen writes. It mightiness adjacent beryllium the lawsuit that “many of the important things successful beingness look to consistently defy measurement.” So however bash we measurement what we bash without misleading ourselves? How tin we usage rankings without letting them regularisation us?

There are tons of ways we could reply these questions. Nguyen approaches them done games. In his erstwhile book, “Games: Agency arsenic Art”—a philosophical smash hit, which won the American Philosophical Association’s Book Prize, successful 2021—he argued that games fto america “flirt” with antithetic “modes of agency.” A pacifist successful existent beingness becomes a subject strategist astatine the chessboard; playing poker, you mightiness proudly deceive your spouse. In “The Score,” Nguyen extends these ideas. Games, helium writes, tin bid america to absorption connected value, by teaching america “the favoritism betwixt goals and purposes.” When you’re playing charades with your family, your extremity is to win, but your intent is to beryllium portion of a radical of radical enjoying themselves. For this reason, arsenic agelong arsenic you person a bully time, you tin consciousness satisfied adjacent if you lose; it would beryllium bizarre to get huffy astir losing astatine charades. In bid to bask the game, however, you indispensable besides instrumentality winning seriously. You person to commit, temporarily, to its values—not conscionable to the worth of winning, but to values similar being demonstrative, extroverted, and unselfconscious.

There are players for whom extremity and intent are identical. They prosecute what Nguyen calls “achievement play”: nonrecreational athletes, for example, play games to win, and judge profoundly successful the glory of victory. But astir of america prosecute “striving play,” successful which “you effort to triumph not due to the fact that winning is important, but due to the fact that the enactment of trying to triumph gives you a delicious struggle.” This involves an interior balancing act. A striving subordinate doesn’t privation a crippled to beryllium excessively casual (there’d beryllium nary struggle) oregon excessively hard (there’d beryllium nary winning); she mightiness find the saccharine spot by putting handicaps successful place, oregon tweaking the rules. But the conflict can’t beryllium allowed to instrumentality precedence, either: it tin beryllium the purpose, but not the goal. Nguyen recalls a person who recovered that his ten-year-old lad was beating him successful Monopoly. The crippled dragged connected until the dada discovered that his lad was reverse-cheating, by sneaking currency backmost to him. The lad hoped to prolong his victorious crippled for arsenic agelong arsenic possible. But you can’t beryllium a stone climber who doesn’t attraction astir getting to the top. You person to strive.

Broadly, Nguyen thinks that we tin gully lessons from game-playing arsenic we effort to navigate a world ruled by rankings and metrics. In the existent world, arsenic successful the crippled world, scores are motivating and clarifying; they tin assistance groups of radical coalesce astir shared goals. But real-world scores, similar crippled scores, are besides reductive. In some cases, that’s the point, arsenic it were, of having a score. A radical of radical playing charades whitethorn travel to the crippled with antithetic purposes—Bob wants to interruption the ice, Anne wants to flirt, Steve wants to amusement disconnected his acting chops, Jill is competitive—but the people helps them signifier a “quick, artificial community” astir the shared and simplified extremity of winning. Similarly, the writers, editors, producers, and businesspeople who enactment astatine a mag each tin agree, for purposes of decision-making, that it’s bully erstwhile a communicative finds tons of readers, and orient their efforts astir that goal. But they indispensable besides beryllium wide astir their idiosyncratic purposes, which are different, nuanced, and harder to communicate. If they absorption lone connected the score, they’ll suffer way of what counts.

Take this reasoning to the extreme. Suppose that the satellite is tally by groups of radical who win done coördination, by agreeing connected shared goals. Those goals whitethorn beryllium reductive, but they’re inactive useful—and the much that radical hold connected them, the much coördinated everyone becomes. Over time, we larn to speech successful the aforesaid ways astir the aforesaid things. We travel to agree, for example, that a large look is 1 that’s received tens of thousands of likes online. That charismatic radical look a definite way, with “tens” astatine the top. That peculiar neighborhoods spot higher successful coolness than different neighborhoods. In each sorts of authoritative and unofficial ways, we’re ranking and sorting. And the much we bash this, the much we support doing it, since everything extracurricular the realm of ranking seems a small mysterious. Those unliked recipes, ordinary-looking people, and unfamous neighborhoods—aren’t they conscionable mid, forgettable, and random?

In Nguyen’s view, thing similar this is happening to our society. He is not lone a superior game-player—in “The Score,” helium ambles done discussions of committee games, video games, enactment games, and the like—but besides a devotee of pastimes specified arsenic skateboarding, cooking, and yo-yo. It’s interesting, helium writes, to spot what happens erstwhile scores are introduced into activities wherever they’ve antecedently been absent. He finds, for instance, that scorekeeping has pushed skateboarders to absorption much connected obvious, badass tricks than connected “steeze,” oregon stylish ease, which is much hard to quantify. He suggests that the advent of scores for vino has made bold, fruity wines much fashionable astatine the disbursal of subtler ones, which mightiness brace amended with food. It’s not that these developments person made skateboarding and vino worse, arsenic such—kickflips and fruity wines tin beryllium great—but that they’ve decreased the assortment of ways successful which excellence tin beryllium experienced. Purposes beryllium successful players, not games, and yet the games person travel to predominate the players. For Nguyen, stone climbing is astir the feeling of moving up the wall, and yet idiosyncratic other whitethorn find the aforesaid enactment rewarding successful a antithetic way. The much we standardize our acquisition and accent goals implicit purposes, the little assortment we cultivate.