Finite and Infinite Games - James Carse

Section One

Key Terms

• Finite Game

  • “played for the purpose of winning” (p. 3)
  • Has an end, and the end/winner is agreed by the players
  • Has “numerical boundaries” (p. 5)

• Infinite Game

  • “played for the purpose of continuing the play” (p. 3)

• Theatrical

  • refers to a fixed performance where the outcome is already known

• Dramatic

  • associated with open-ended, unpredictable action

• Title

  • “A title is the acknowledgement of others that one has been the winner of a particular game.”

Notable Quotes

Finite + Infinite Definitions

In one respect, but only one, an infinite game is identical to a finite game: Of infinite players, we can also say that if they play they play freely; if they must play, they cannot play. (p. 6)

This reminds me of the quote from Winnicott’s Playing and Reality: “Psychotherapy takes place at the overlap of two areas of playing: that of the patient and that of the therapist. Psychotherapy has to do with two people playing together. The corollary of this is that where playing is not possible then the work done by the therapist is directed towards bringing the patient from a state of not being able to play into a state of being able to play.”

Indeed the only purpose of the [infinite] game is to prevent it from coming to an end, to keep everyone in play. (p. 6-7)

Emphasis mine – I love that “to keep everyone in play” is a very specific component of infinite games, I missed that on the first read-through.

[…] duration can be measured only externally to that which endures. (p. 7)

I like the concept here of infinite games as a substrata within which everything else exists. (See the last section of the book: there is but one infinite game. (!!!))

Reminds me of Vervake’s explanation of non-theism vs (a)theism – that God cannot exist in a world where existence is a quality of things. Things that are do not exist because of their existence – they have a quality which manifests as existence, and that thusness exists within a realm where being or non-being are qualities that could potentially be.

Rules + Winning

Rules are not valid because the Senate passed them, or because heroes once played by them […] They are valid only if and when players freely play by them.

There are no rules that require us to obey rules.

So much to say there about agency and the explicit acknowledgement of “we are playing a game right now” when agreeing to terms. For example, is agreeing to pay a mortgage a finite game? Do we simply agree to the rules set forth?

[…] the most critical distinction between finite nad infinite play: The rules of an infinite game must change in the course of play.

Finite players play within boundaries, infinite players play with boundaries. (p. 10)

Although it may be evident enough in theory that whoever plays a finite game plays freely, it is often the case that finite players will be unaware of this absolute freedom and will come to think that whtever they do they must do.

It may appear that the prizes for winning are indispensable, that without them life is meaningless, perhaps even impossible.

He goes on to talk about slavery or death threats here, but the the “life is meaningless” bit is also pretty central to the thesis, I think. A meaningful life is in a sense a target, and by extension a finite game. (The audience is the people to whom one proves their life is meaningful!)

Roles + Veils

Certainly the price for refusing [to play an oppressive game] is high, but that there is a price at all points to the fact that oppressors themselves acknowledge that even the weakest of their subjects must agree to be oppressed.

This is a point I feel extremely conflicted about – a slave, even in rebellion, isn’t necessarily agreeing to the rules set out before them, nor are they really opting in to the game. You cannot tell me that slavery is a finite game in which a child being murdered is simply that child not agreeing to the game. Perhaps I’m just pushing back against the language (“game” seems somewhat innocent for such a tragedy), but I also think that it’s a case where a player cannot refuse to play the game – their conditions are such that their participation is required. He later states “fields of play simply do not impose themselves on us,” but this seems untrue in the case of slavery??

Players must forget the inherent voluntary nature of their play, else all competitive effort will desert them.

I agree on this in most cases, but I do start to question something about some of these games being “inherently voluntary.” Can I think of some other cases? It feels like for these to be “inherently” voluntary, very explicit agreement to play must be involved, and that feels untrue for e.g. early childhood or developmental trauama that creates behavioral cycles or something like that.

neither do we as an audience forget we are an audience. […] So it is with all roles.

This is kinda just wrong? We forget our roles all the time – many of our roles are so deeply habituated in our habit mind that they’re essentialy unconscious.

e.g.:

A mother’s words, actions, and feelings belong to the role and not to the person

I’m not a mother so maybe this is totally wrong, but doesn’t this just ignore the role of instinct? The role of a mother isn’t purely performative (e.g. there are similarities across cultures, physical things at play, etc.)

The issue is whether we are ever willing to drop the veil and openly acknowledge, if only to ourselves, that we have freely chose to face the world through a mask.

This is beginning to feel deeply at odds with the idea that finite games are fundamentally voluntary.

Finite games require us to voluntarily play the game + in finite games “players must intentionally forget the voluntary nature of their play, else all competitive desire will desert them” = now you must give up the mask (???)

In the actress analogy here, he says the actress must give up the mask after the play is over, so I’m guessing this is more about the boundaries between finite play and returning to infinite play, or something?

If no amount of veiling can conceal the veiling itself, the issue is how far we will go in our seriousness at self-veiling, and how far we will go to have others act in complicity with us.

❤️ Okay I do love this part though.

The question always comes back to me though – how do we play finite games without the confusion of the mask lingering? Can we?

[infinite players] enter into finite games with all the appropriate energy and self-veiling, but they do so without the seriousness of finite players.

Isn’t this in opposition with “Players must forget the inherent voluntary nature of their play, else all competitive effort will desert them”? Doesn’t self-veiling require seriousness, else it’s not actually veiling?

Winning, Prizes

To be serious is to press for a specific conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself.

Again though – can you do this and still earnestly play a finite game? It really sounds like no.

It is the desire of all finite plauers to be Master Players, to be so perfectly skilled in their play that nothing can surprise them

❤️ Love this, again so many life applications. Makes me think that for most folks, the error lies in mistaking infinite games for finite ones (but I suppose not the other way around?)

Because infinite players prepare themselves to be surprised by the future, they play in complete openness. It is not an openness as in candor, but an openness as in vulnerability. It is not a matter of exposing one’s unchanging identity, the true self that has always been, but a way of exposing one’s ceasless growth, the dynamic self that has yet to be.

It is a principal function of society to validate titles and to assure their perpetual recognition.

🤔

The winner kills the opponent. The loser is dead in the sense of being incapable of further play.

If the prize for winning finite play is life, then the players are not properly alive. They are competing for life. Life, then is not play, but the outcome of plau. Finite plauers play to live; they do not lie their playing. Life is therefore deserved, bestowed, possessed, won. It is not lived.

s/life/love/g 🤔

It is not laughter at others who have come to an unexpected end, having thought they were going somewhere else. It is laughter with others with whom we have discovered that the end we thought we were coming to has unexpectedly opened.

Is the differentiation between infinite and finite play purely mental/attentional/emotional/etc.? Concrete differences seem largely irrelevant (since infinite players can play finite games) in this discourse.

(Aside: to what degree do those distinctions matter? Is the poeticism of it all enough?)

The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in learning to start something we cannot finish.

Damn. (paradoxical vs contradictory is a great frame!)

[…] one does not win by being powerful; one wins to be powerful. If one has sufficient power to win before the game has befun, what follows is not a game at all.

This is sorta my objection to certain power dynamics (e.g. slavery) discussed before being called games – there are many such cases where slavery is the product of a power imbalance so strong that nothing can be done. Is that always true? I don’t know – but it’s certainly true at times.

But of course this plays into the next point, that playing the game implies that one does not have power (since they’re moving towards power) – and that being powerful means not playing the game at all.

Infinite players do not oppose the actions of others, but initiate actions of their own in such a way that others will respond by initiating their own.

[Strength] is an opening and not a closing act.

Another cool frame: what’s opening vs closing?

Evil

Evil is the termination of infinite play. It is infinite play coming to an end in unheard silence.

Anyways: interesting or thought-provoking definition.

Q: from the end of the book, there is only one infinite game, so how is it terminated? How does evil exist if it has not yet been terminated?

[Evil] is the forced recognition of a title. […] The Nazis did not compete with the Jews for a title, but demanded recognition of a title without competition. This could be achieved, however, only by silencing the Jews, only by hearing nothing from them.

Again, this kinda goes back to my point about slavery – it’s evil, not a finite game being competed.

[Infinite players] only attempt paradocixally to recognize in themselves the evil that takes the form of attempting to eliminate evil elsewhere.

🤔

Evil is […] the restriction of all play to one or another finite game.

🤔

Open Questions

• The book opens with “There are at least two kinds of games.” Is there a third? More? Is it a spectrum?
• Do we ever really define the word “play”? What does “not playing” cover in this world?
  • I have the sense that in way it’s like nirvana vs. samsara in the Buddhist frame – in some view they’re the same, and in other views they are themselves competing views
  • “No one can play who is forced to play” (p. 4)
• If the winner is agreed upon by the players, what’s the role of the audience? Purely recognition? Does the audience have no say in the winner?
  • Does this hold for e.g. fame? What about wealth (where presumably the audience and competitors are kinda the same)?
  • re: the audience, “it is simply the case that if the players do not agree on a winner, the game has not come to a decisive conclusion” (p. 3)
  • I guess then – do things like fame not have a decisive conclusion? What’s the smaller frame there? To be famous in a particular moment? Is that even a game?
    • By his definition, these aren’t games: they lack spatial/temporal boundaries and the knowing participation of the players (p. 4)
• Contradictions about participation: “There is no finite game unless the players freely choose to play it” (p. 4) vs “finite players cannot select themselves for play” (p. 5)
  • It makes sense that one must have opponents, but one must also choose to participate with his opponents – I think that’s slightly different than what’s stated explicitly
  • I think “select themselves for play” is maybe a bit oddly worded IMO
    • Honestly it gets back to my question of “what is play” – is this just defining the point that play is inherently antagonistic (but arises out of mutual desire for sucess) in finite play?
• Assertion: “Finite games can be played within an infinite game, but an infinite game cannot be played within a finite game.” Is that just totally wrong?
  • The greats of a sport are pretty clearly just playing that sport, but basketball is everything to LeBron James or Kobe Bryant.
  • I suppose to players like that, one could argue that’s them playing a finite game within an infinite game (competition in the abstract?)
• To ^ (last bullet of last question): if there’s only one infinite game, then that axiom is sorta tautological.