Authors in August: Thi Nguyen’s “The Score”

**David Gardner** (0:00)
I'm a lifelong gamer. I was playing Stratomatic Baseball and Dungeons and Dragons as a kid, and then along came Pong, the first video game, and then about 10,000 more board games, video games, card games, word games, mobile games, games, games, games, which is the podcast I do every December listing my year's favorite games. And then I met Thi Nguyen, author, professor, philosopher, and philosopher focusing specifically on games. In our first Rule Breaker Investing podcast conversation in 2023, Thi helped us answer, what are games, really? Why we voluntarily embrace unnecessary obstacles? What games teach us about ourselves and how they shape our agency? And then in our second conversation in 2024, I asked, why do games matter?
Why do games deserve to be considered one of humanity's great art forms? Thi gave us a deeper dive this time into his book, Games, Agency as Art, Exploring Striving Play, Achievement Play, Games as Works of Art, and why some of life's richest experiences come from pursuing goals, we ultimately don't need.
In case you think this is just about board games or video games, by the way, it isn't. All games are included, including, if you will, the games of business, of investing, of life. Well, this time, kicking off Authors in August in 2026, Thi has written a fantastic book, possibly, I don't know, his magnum opus. We'll see, where he asks, what happens when life starts keeping score? Not just games anymore, scores, metrics, rankings, performance. How the numbers we invent to measure success can quietly reshape what we value and what we become. The Score, how to stop playing somebody else's game, only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:02)
It's the Rule Breaker Investing podcast with Motley Fool co-founder, David Gardner.

**David Gardner** (2:10)
Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. It's August, therefore, it's time for Authors. Authors in August now in, I don't know, sixth or seventh year of doing this. What a delight getting to meet and then sometimes re-meet some of my favorite authors, always featuring books that I've personally read and deeply enjoyed wanting to share that with you, hoping you might read along too. Many of you have, I tend to foreshadow these a month or so ahead, and I've already heard from some fellow fools who said, I wouldn't have known about The Score and I loved it. Well, I did too. Let me mention next week, Vasant Dar, New York University professor, AI pioneer, his book, Thinking With Machines. Looking forward to talking. I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about AI this week too, but especially focusing next week on Thinking With Machines by Vasant Dar. D-H-A-R. When he first joined me in February, 2023, I was noting at the time that he had no Wikipedia page entry.
I thought this outrageous and I suggested aloud to you, my foolish listeners, that maybe you could help remedy that. Now, I'm not saying any fellow fools did this, I couldn't know.
But I am happy to say that this little bio that I've cobbled up now comes from reading Thi's Wikipedia page, and after I share it, my first question for my esteemed guest is, is it accurate? So here we go. After graduating from Harvard University where he majored in philosophy, CT. Nguyen lived in the Boston area working as a tech writer. He quotes, made a lot of money, but hated it.
And enrolled in a philosophy Ph.D. program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Nguyen completed his dissertation on the epistemology of moral testimony, while working as a food writer for the Los Angeles Times. After completing his doctorate, Nguyen taught as an adjunct professor while doing work on the philosophy of aesthetics. His first book, Games, Agency is Art, won the American Philosophical Association's 2021 Book Prize. Welcome back, CT. Nguyen, and Thi, did they get it right on the Wikipedia?

**Thi Nguyen** (4:18)
I mean, they got the Wikifax right, but they left out all the temperamental... There's no like despair, sorrow, absurdity and chaos in that, just the kind of bare skeletal bones, but that's about right.

**David Gardner** (4:31)
Well, this represents progress from three years ago, so you know, we can't go in and edit our own pages, but perhaps others will listen and hear you, and maybe it'll self-improve over the course of time. Ralph Waldo Emberson used to ask this question of friends whom he hadn't seen in a while, so I'm going to ask it of you. Thi, what's become clear to you since we last met?

**Thi Nguyen** (4:53)
This is a cruel and unusual question.
What's become clear to me is basically the entire book.
Basically, this book started as a question that I talk myself into backwards. I spent a lot of time as we talked about in our previous podcast, talking about the beauty of games, and that theory was a love owed to scoring systems. That original theory was like, look, what makes games magical as an art form, what makes them special is the constraints and the point systems. What the point systems lets a game designer do is reach inside their soul and set desires. They let game designers shape us like plastic putty or something, and then create these beautiful experiences through setting alternate selves with alternate cares.