In bridge, a heart trick earns 30 points while a club trick earns 20, numbers that mean nothing outside of the game. That's the whole point, argues philosopher C. Thi Nguyen in his book The Score . Good games use an arbitrary scoring system as a means to an end and never pretend the score means anything on its own. Nguyen's slogan: "Games matter because games don't matter."

Bad games do the reverse. Credit scores, university league tables, and the clicks-and-minutes metrics that data harvesters chase all dress their arbitrary numbers up as legitimate, hide the seams, and trap you with the sunk-cost fallacy. A good game is voluntary and lets you walk away.…