Finite and Infinite Games

by James P. Carse

Some self-veiling is present in all finite games. Players must intentionally forget the inherently voluntary nature of their play, else all competitive effort will desert them.

To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as though nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful with each other we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence. It is, in fact, seriousness that closes itself to consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility. To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself.

We cannot say a person played this infinite game or that, as though the rules are independent of the concrete circumstances of play. It can be said only that these persons played with each other and in such a way that what they began cannot be finished.

The fact that a finite game is provisionally dramatic means that it is the intention of each player to eliminate its drama by making a preferred end inevitable. It is the desire of all finite players to be Master Players, to be so perfectly skilled in their play that nothing can surprise them, so perfectly trained that every move in the game is foreseen at the beginning. A true Master Player plays as though the game is already in the past, according to a script whose every detail is known prior to the play itself.

What the winners of finite games achieve is not properly an afterlife but an afterworld, not continuing existence but continuing recognition of their titles.

Infinite play is inherently paradoxical, just as finite play is inherently contradictory. Because it is the purpose of infinite players to continue the play, they do not play for themselves. The contradiction of finite play is that the players desire to bring play to an end for themselves. The paradox of infinite play is that the players desire to continue the play in others. The paradox is precisely that they play only when others go on with the game. Infinite players play best when they become least necessary to the continuation of play. It is for this reason they play as mortals. The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in learning to start something we cannot finish.

A powerful person is one who brings the past to an outcome, settling all its unresolved issues. A strong person is one who carries the past into the future, showing that none of its issues is capable of resolution. Power is concerned with what has already happened; strength with what has yet to happen. Power is finite in amount. Strength cannot be measured, because it is an opening and not a closing act. Power refers to the freedom persons have within limits, strength to the freedom persons have with limits.

It is an evil when the drama of a life does not continue in others for reason of their deafness or ignorance.

This is the sort of playfulness implied in the ordinary sense of such terms as entertainment, amusement, diversion, comic relief, recreation, relaxation. Inevitably, however, seriousness will creep back into this kind of play. The executive’s vacation, like the football team’s time out, comes to be a device for refreshing the contestant for a higher level of competition.

If society is all that a people feels it must do, culture “is the realm of the variable, free, not necessarily universal, of all that cannot lay claim to compulsive authority” (Burckhardt).

Whoever is unable to show a correspondence between wealth and the risks undergone to acquire it, or the talents spent in its acquisition, will soon face a challenge over entitlement. The rich are regularly subject to theft, to taxation, to the expectation that their wealth be shared, as though what they have is not true compensation and therefore not completely theirs.

Property must take up space. It must be somewhere—and somewhere obvious. That is, it must exist in such a form that others will come upon it and take notice of it. Our property must intrude on another, stand in another’s way, causing one to contend with it. Propertied persons typically have large estates and freedom of movement through the society. At the same time, the property of the rich has the effect of crowding and confining the less propertied. The very poor are typically restricted to narrow geographical limits and are regarded as aliens outside them.

There is a second theatrical requirement that falls on the owners of property. Once they have drawn attention to what they have lost in acquiring what they own, they must then consume what they have gained in a way that recovers the loss. The intuitive principle here is that we cannot be justified in owning what we do not need to use or plan to use. One does not earn money merely to store it away where it will be protected from all possible future use.

Winners, especially celebrated winners, must prove repeatedly they are winners. The script must be played over and over again. Titles must be defended by new contests. No one is ever wealthy enough, honored enough, applauded enough. On the contrary, the visibility of our victories only tightens the grip of the failures in our invisible past.

One is never ill in general. One is always ill with relation to some bounded activity. It is not cancer that makes me ill. It is because I cannot work, or run, or swallow that I am ill with cancer.