C. Thi Nguyen: Prioritizing enjoyment over efficiency in games, the pitfalls of social media scoring systems, and how metrics can obscure true value | Bankless

Key takeaways

• Enjoyment in games should prioritize satisfaction over efficiency and high scores.
• Activities like fishing can be appreciated as games focused on experience rather than outcomes.
• Games are defined by voluntarily engaging in challenges that create struggle.
• Not all life activities fit the definition of a game.
• Practical activities differ from games in that they focus on achieving goals efficiently.
• Social media uses game-like mechanics, influencing user behavior without being true games.
• Scoring systems in games provide objective measures of success, influencing social media dynamics.
• Social media’s scoring systems simplify complex interactions for easy comparison.
• Metrics can obscure qualitative aspects of success, such as ethical development in students.
• Outsourcing personal values to external metrics can lead to dissatisfaction.
• Financial wealth should be viewed as a resource for pursuing meaningful goals.
• Large-scale metrics can limit individual agency by promoting a singular view of value.

Guest intro

C. Thi Nguyen is a professor of philosophy at the University of Utah. He is the author of Games: Agency as Art, which won the American Philosophical Association 2021 Book Prize, and his latest book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game, examines how metrics capture and flatten human values. Previously a food writer for the Los Angeles Times, his work on games, agency, and gamification has been featured in top philosophy journals.

The balance between enjoyment and competition in games

• “The enjoyment of games should not be sacrificed for efficiency or higher scores.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Games should be played for fun, not just to max out scores.
• “Fishing can be seen as a game where the enjoyment of the experience is more important than the quantity of fish caught.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Activities like fishing highlight the distinction between enjoyment and competition.
• “Games involve voluntarily taking on unnecessary obstacles to create the possibility of struggle.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Not every activity in life should be considered a game.
• “I don’t think everything is a game.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Understanding the balance between enjoyment and competition can enrich gaming experiences.

The philosophical definition of games

• Games are defined by voluntarily engaging in challenges that create struggle.
• “The short version is that playing a game is voluntarily taking on unnecessary obstacles to create the possibility of the activity of struggling to overcome them.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Not all life activities fit the definition of a game.
• “I don’t think everything is a game.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Practical activities differ from games in that they focus on achieving goals efficiently.
• “The world just quickly divides into what suits calls normal practical activity and game activity.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Angling is a game because it involves engaging with the psychology of the fish.
• “What you’re doing is you’re trying to trick the fish into biting your fake lure or your bait.” – C. Thi Nguyen

The impact of social media’s game-like mechanics

• Social media uses game-like mechanics, influencing user behavior without being true games.
• “I actually think what’s really crucial to understand the damage of the gamification of social media is to understand that it’s not a game in a really profound way.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Scoring systems are a fundamental aspect of gamified platforms.
• “The crucial thing it has is a scoring system… you can have a game without having a scoring system.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Social media’s scoring systems simplify complex interactions for easy comparison.
• “If you’re on social media there is a scoring system and if you orient yourself towards it then you have an instant and complete way to like you know insta compare each tweet.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Social media likes flatten the complexity of human reactions to communication.
• “The important thing about likes on social media is there’s a flattening aspect it only picks up like it only picks up whether or not someone was pro or con and it aggregates.” – C. Thi Nguyen

The limitations of scoring systems in evaluating art

• Scoring systems like Rotten Tomatoes can obscure the true quality of films.
• “If you’re using rotten tomatoes as a measure what you’re gonna pick up on the kinds of movies that do well on rotten tomatoes are precisely the movies that are engineered or made so that everyone will get and everyone will get about equally.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Good movies often receive low scores because they are controversial.
• “Most of them sit around 50 or 60% because good movies are often controversial… some people are repelled by them.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• The plurality of values in communication can lead to misunderstandings about successful interactions.
• “That plurality of values means that different people can be judging a conversation in different ways.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Outsourcing decisions in art can lead to a lack of personal development in taste.
• “I feel like I can’t think you’re cheating if you just let other people push you into the artwork that you like.” – C. Thi Nguyen

The role of metrics in personal and societal decision-making

• Outsourcing personal values to external metrics can lead to dissatisfaction.
• “It’s very easy for people in finance and crypto to just outsource their value to what’s their net worth score.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• The tension between personal happiness and societal status can create internal conflict.
• “I knew that the place that I am at which is lower ranked on this official external ranking… I was happier there.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• External scoring systems simplify complex value judgments in life.
• “One of the things I say in my book the pleasure of games is that they reduce value complexity.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Financial wealth should be viewed as a resource for pursuing meaningful goals.
• “You have a real question about whether or not the scoring system of continuing to max out your financial wealth is the one that’s valuable to you.” – C. Thi Nguyen

The influence of metrics on education and public health

• Metrics can obscure important qualitative aspects of success, such as ethical development in students.
• “If you want to say something like what about making students who are ethical and thoughtful… since I don’t have clear metrics for that that like falls off the radar.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Public health decisions often prioritize mortality rates over community well-being.
• “I think when making public health decisions we often hyper target things that involve mortality rates.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Society often simplifies complex concepts into quantifiable metrics.
• “We lose track of is like some of the more nebulous loose ideas of health which is like you know eating food that was grown you know more domestically closer to you from farmers markets.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Large-scale metrics can limit individual agency by promoting a singular view of value.
• “Large scale institutional metrics even though they superficially look like look like games are agency squashing machines.” – C. Thi Nguyen

The impact of technology and systems on human behavior

• Technologies and systems we engage with have their own interests and points of view.
• “One of the things that I’ve really learned from a bunch of philosophers of technology and historians of technology is a particular way of thinking about the world where technologies and the systems we engage in have an interest they have a point of view.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Maps and scoring systems are not neutral; they serve specific interests and guide actions.
• “Maps aren’t neutral maps like have a point of view and you can see that point of view from what they show and what they don’t show.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Playfulness can help individuals distance themselves from societal scoring systems.
• “Playfulness is a habit that can help you regularly distance yourself from the scoring systems at play like have some fun.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• The American grading system primarily serves the interests of employers rather than students.
• “The American grading system doesn’t serve the interests of student happiness or even student education it serves the interests of employers looking to quickly hire like someone that can do a job right.” – C. Thi Nguyen

The importance of playfulness and agency in games

• Playfulness allows individuals to navigate and experiment with different rule sets and normative worlds.
• “Playfulness is the spirit of moving lightly and easily between rule sets and normative worlds.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Indie tabletop role-playing games emerged as a response to traditional games that did not meet players’ desires for character-driven narratives.
• “There’s a super interesting history of people that played a lot of dungeons and dragons and some people loved it and then some people really found that it wasn’t giving them the experience they wanted.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Game mechanics can be designed to encourage character development and narrative depth.
• “In lady blackbird if you run out of energy points you get them back by having a refreshment scene.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Reflective control involves treating metrics in life like game rules that can be modified based on personal values.
• “The metrics that the system hands you in your life you treat them as much like much more like game rules that can be changed or modified.” – C. Thi Nguyen

The dual nature of scoring systems

• The scoring systems we engage with can be both limiting and empowering, depending on how we choose to interact with them.
• “If you recognize it as a merely external system then you will as we say like play the game to some extent but then distance yourself from it and take control where you can.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Games promote agency by allowing individuals to explore different scoring systems and values.
• “Games I think are agency promoting machines in that they let people jump between different scoring systems and try on different things.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• The game Civilization can be both enjoyable and miserable depending on the player.
• “Civilization makes some people miserable and some people happy and that’s okay.” – C. Thi Nguyen
• Players should seek out games that resonate with them and enhance their enjoyment.
• “If you like civilization play civilization if you don’t don’t… make the games you’re playing better.” – C. Thi Nguyen