When Life Becomes a Game, What Do We Lose?

What's the fastest way to finish a marathon? Take a taxi. But no one would call you a marathoner for doing so. This simple truth reveals something profound about games, argues philosopher C. Thi Nguyen.

In his book The Score, Nguyen defines games as "voluntarily undertaking unnecessary obstacles in order to create the experience of struggling to overcome them." A marathon runner isn't just trying to reach the finish line—they're trying to get there in a particular way, under particular constraints, using their own legs.

This insight cuts deeper than sports. It reveals how modern life has been quietly transformed into something resembling a game, complete with scores, metrics, and rankings. But unlike real games, these systems often trap rather than liberate us.

Why We Crave Constraints

Nguyen rock climbs for an unusual reason: "It's the only thing that makes my brain shut up." Only the brutality and intensity of climbing can quiet his hyperactive mind.

He finds similar peace in fly-fishing, though catching fish isn't the point. Most fly fishers practice catch and release. The real purpose is cultivating "an incredibly intense form of attention"—staring with absolute focus at the surface of moving water for hours.

This captures something essential about games: the value lies in the process, not the outcome. The beauty is in acting, feeling, competing, cooperating—the experience of doing, not just achieving.

The Paradox of Liberating Constraints

At climbing gyms, "problems" are set using holds of specific colors. You could ignore these constraints and climb wherever you want. But you'd miss something crucial.

Nguyen admits he was clumsy, with no sense of where his hips were. Only by working specific challenging problems did he discover subtle hip movements and delicate balance. The constraint forced him to find refinement he never would have discovered otherwise.

Yoga teaches the same lesson. Left to move freely, people repeat habitual postures. It's the restriction and clarity of specific poses that forces discovery of new ways to move.

In soccer, the constraint against using hands reveals what feet can do. Freedom comes from cycling through various constraints, each pushing us somewhere new.

When Games Become Prisons

If constraints create freedom in games, why do scoring systems in everyday life often do the opposite? Why do workplace metrics and social rankings feel so oppressive?

The answer lies in design and choice. Games are designed for fun, pleasure, joy. Institutional scoring systems are designed for productivity, efficiency, accountability. They're not meant to be lived inside joyfully.

More importantly, games offer choice. You can switch between games, quit, refuse to play. But you rarely have meaningful choice over the scoring systems governing your education, career, or social status.

The crucial difference is what Nguyen calls the separation between goals and purposes. In a board game, the goal is to win, but the purpose is to have fun. In fly-fishing, the goal is catching fish, but the purpose might be meditation or connection with nature.

This separation creates what he calls the "magic circle"—a space where you can compete intensely with someone you love without threatening the relationship. The score is insulated, contained within the game.

The Gamification Trap

But when scores aren't insulated—when they determine your grades, salary, social status, ability to pay rent—the freedom collapses. The metric stops being a playful target and becomes a governing value.

Consider how LinkedIn has gamified professional networking, turning career development into a points-chasing exercise. Or how Uber and Lyft use ratings to control driver behavior. These systems promise clarity and fairness but often reduce complex human interactions to simple numbers.

The danger isn't measurement itself—it's what Nguyen calls "value capture." Simplified metrics gradually replace richer, more human forms of judgment. We start optimizing for the metric rather than the underlying value it was meant to represent.

The Corporate Gaming Complex

American workplaces have embraced gamification with evangelical fervor. Sales teams compete on leaderboards. Employees earn badges for completing training. Performance reviews reduce complex human contributions to numerical scores.

Microsoft famously used stack ranking, forcing managers to rate employees on a curve. Amazon uses detailed metrics to track warehouse workers' every movement. These systems promise objectivity but often create perverse incentives and anxiety.

The irony is stark: real games create joy through voluntary constraints, while workplace "games" impose mandatory constraints that often drain joy from work.