The 'good' student belives that the signaling mechanism and the understanding of the material is the same thing, they're identical. For those students nothing exists beyond (the signals of) good marks. So in a way they don't really game.
Arguing with them on that point proved useless in the past, but now that I get interesting internships while they don't, I believe they are somehow waking up.
At least, focusing on being a 'good student' is not the worst strategy out there. If one day you come to be aware of it, it's not an irrecuperable situation.
As a two grad-student couple, we have mutual academic envy. I envy that she finds it easy to memorize large sums of material and pander to the system. She envies that I find it easy to acquire an intuition for the material I really care about. I envy that she's "saving the world" as an ecologist. She envies that I can make a good living out of my field.
Welp.