Game of thrones, university edition: gaming and counter-gaming in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (2016–2025)

University rankings persist despite contested metrics, the problematic incentives they generate, and the strategic gaming they invite – dynamics that should undermine their claim to measuring excellence, deter participation, and ultimately erode the rankings themselves. This study addresses such persistence by reconceptualizing rankings as cycles of gaming and counter-gaming in which rankers and universities interactively reproduce what counts as excellence. We argue that these cycles are sustained through reciprocal decoupling: rankers inevitably decouple metrics from the myth of excellence, which helps maintain university participation, while universities game by decoupling their reporting practices from those metrics to generate strategically amplified signals of excellence. In response, rankers counter-game to reclaim jurisdiction and constrain strategic representations of excellence by ostensibly realigning metrics with the myth. Using longitudinal data from the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE-WUR), we empirically trace gaming and counter-gaming across 2016–2025. Given THE-WUR’s reliance on evaluative pillars that allowed varying reporting discretion, many universities developed concentrated performance profiles in the most elastic pillars – where greater discretion allows short-term leverage – consistent with gaming, whereas higher scores in less elastic pillars were associated with more balanced profiles. THE-WUR counter-gamed in 2024 by reformulating its pillars, weakening the link between pillar scores and concentration while contributing to substantial rank declines among universities with higher pre-reform concentration. The findings point that rankings endure not simply as external impositions but as evolving interaction orders maintained through cycles of gaming and counter-gaming that reproduce the tensions between the myth of excellence, metrics, and reporting practices.