Squirrel

'value capture' - rankings, metrics, and measures set by external institutional systems, influencing desires and goals - allowing others to set simplified, often quantified renditions o

'value capture' - rankings, metrics, and measures set by external institutional systems, influencing desires and goals - allowing others to set simplified, often quantified renditions of your values
Value capture occurs when you get your values from some external source and let them rule you without adapting them.
...outsourcing your values to an institution. (Ch 1)

Maybe this wouldn't matter ... if they truly captured what is valuable in the world. But ... Metrics ... shaped by institutional forces ... are subject to demands for fast, efficient data collection at scale, to ... fitting into spreadsheets and action reports.

Institutional metrics are part of a system that abstracts away from personal difference and local detail and identifies some thin, measurable detail. And what's easily measured is rarely what's really valuable.

Call this the Gap. The Gap is the distance between what's being measured and what actually matters.

This is the peculiarity at the heart of games: They tell you what to desire. And we players are fluid enough that we can let those scoring systems shape our desires. We can slip into alternate motivational states like a new set of clothes. We have the ability to start a game find out what will get us points, and then-for a period of time-care intensely, exactly as we're told to.

It's not just that a game tells you what counts as winning for this game. It sets the deeper meaning of winning.

...goal manipulation can be relatively safe in games. Because often in games, the goal isn't what really matters. We adopt the goal in order to experience the process. the beauty is in the struggle. [or the different characteristics you get to adopt for the duration - selfish, cooperative, violent...]