{"title":"C Thi Nguyen","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"games-book-c-thi-nguyen-9780190052089","title":"Games","description":"Games are a unique art form. Games work in the medium of agency. Game designers tell us who to be and what to care about during the game. Game designers sculpt alternate agencies, and game players submerge themselves in those alternate agencies. Thus, the fact that we play games demonstrates the fluidity of our own agency. We can throw ourselves, for a little while, into a different and temporary motivations. \n\nThis volume presents a new theory of games which insists on their unique value. C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are an integral part our systems of communication and our art. Games sculpt our practical activities, allowing us to experience the beauty of our own actions and reasoning. Bridging aesthetics and practical reasoning, he gives an account of the special motivational structure involved in playing games. When we play games, we can pursue a goal, not for its own value, but for the value of the struggle. Thus, playing games involves a motivational inversion from normal life. We adopt an interest in winning temporarily, so we can experience the beauty of the struggle. Games offer us a temporary experience of life under utterly clear values, in a world engineered to fit to our abilities and goals.\n\nGames also let us to experience forms of agency we might never have developed on our own. Games, it turns out, are a special technique for communication. They are a technology that lets us record and transmit forms of agency. Our games form a \"library of agency\" and we can explore that library to develop our autonomy. Games use temporary restrictions to force us into new postures of agency.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50409092612369,"sku":"NGR9780190052089","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50999560012049,"sku":"NIN9780190052089","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51421117317393,"sku":"GOR014268198","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51503534440721,"sku":"CIN0190052082G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53137887232273,"sku":"NLS9780190052089","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0190052082.jpg?v=1786443271"},{"product_id":"games-book-c-thi-nguyen-9780197815656","title":"Games","description":"Games are a unique art form. Games work in the medium of agency. Game designers tell us who to be and what to care about during the game. Game designers sculpt alternate agencies, and game players submerge themselves in those alternate agencies. Thus, the fact that we play games demonstrates the fluidity of our own agency. We can throw ourselves, for a little while, into a different and temporary motivations. \n\nThis volume presents a new theory of games which insists on their unique value. C. Thi Nguyen argues that games are an integral part our systems of communication and our art. Games sculpt our practical activities, allowing us to experience the beauty of our own actions and reasoning. Bridging aesthetics and practical reasoning, he gives an account of the special motivational structure involved in playing games. When we play games, we can pursue a goal, not for its own value, but for the value of the struggle. Thus, playing games involves a motivational inversion from normal life. We adopt an interest in winning temporarily, so we can experience the beauty of the struggle. Games offer us a temporary experience of life under utterly clear values, in a world engineered to fit to our abilities and goals.\n\nGames also let us to experience forms of agency we might never have developed on our own. Games, it turns out, are a special technique for communication. They are a technology that lets us record and transmit forms of agency. Our games form a \"library of agency\" and we can explore that library to develop our autonomy. Games use temporary restrictions to force us into new postures of agency.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51202217640209,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51202218262801,"sku":"NGR9780197815656","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52495841558801,"sku":"NIN9780197815656","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0197815650.jpg?v=1786442509"},{"product_id":"score-book-c-thi-nguyen-9780593655658","title":"The Score","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"Mind-expanding . . . \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e is so exuberant and readable that the depth and seriousness of its insights almost sneak up on you.\" --Jennifer Szalai, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"Brilliant and wildly original . . . \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e is socially attentive, historically literate and imbued with sensual glee.\" --Becca Rothfeld, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"I give this excellent book five stars.\" \u003ci\u003e--\u003c\/i\u003eStuart Jeffries, \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eA philosophy of games to help us win back control over what we value\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e The philosopher C. Thi Nguyen--one of the leading experts 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Games are the most important art form of our era. They embody the spirit of free play. They show us the subtle beauty of action everywhere in life in video games, sports, and boardgames--but also cooking, gardening, fly-fishing, and running. They remind us that it isn't always about outcomes, but about how glorious it feels to be doing the thing. And the scoring systems help get us there, by giving us new goals to try on.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Scoring systems are also at the center of our corporations and bureaucracies--in the form of metrics and rankings. They tell us exactly how to measure our success. They encourage us to outsource our values to an external authority. And they push on us to value simple, countable things. Metrics don't capture what really matters; they only capture what's easy to measure. The price of that clarity is our independence.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e asks us is this the game you really want to be playing?","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52980395344145,"sku":"NIN9780593655658","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53242904019217,"sku":"CIN0593655656VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53375142986001,"sku":"CIN0593655656G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":54110888853777,"sku":"GOR015062411","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780593655658.jpg?v=1785862225"},{"product_id":"score-book-c-thi-nguyen-9781802063745","title":"The Score","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Lucid, entertaining and precise... a brilliant warning about the gamification of everyday life' Tim Clare, \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eGuardian\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eIs this the game you want to be playing?\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eScoring systems are everywhere. Underpinning our daily lives – whether it’s the fit bits on our wrists, likes on social media, and even school rankings – they have become pervasive and increasingly dangerous, warping our desires and outsourcing our values to external institutions. Instead of encouraging us to be more playful, to take pleasure in the journey of striving towards a goal, institutions, corporations and bureaucracies weaponize scoring systems to impose their own interests. No matter what, we always seem to be playing by someone else’s rules.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Score\u003c\/i\u003e, philosopher C. Thi Nguyen shows us how this newly ‘gamified’ world has fundamentally captured our value systems, turning what might be moral or personal life choices into numerical data, and forcing us to prioritise what can be measured and monetized over what is truly meaningful to us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA life-long lover of online and board games himself, Nguyen argues that we should not stop playing games but rather take a step back and become more aware of their immersive and profound power, so that we might chart a way towards more creative and joyful lives. To start playing our own game.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":54093711212817,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":54093711311121,"sku":"NGR9781802063745","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-c-thi-nguyen.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}