Finite and Infinite Games

by James P. Carse

Infinite players regard their wins and losses in whatever finite games they play as but moments in continuing play.

The agreement of the players to the applicable rules constitutes the ultimate validation of those rules.

The rules of an infinite game must change in the course of play.

The rules are changed when the players of an infinite game agree that the play is imperiled by a finite outcome—that is, by the victory of some players and the defeat of others. The rules of an infinite game are changed to prevent anyone from winning the game and to bring as many persons as possible into the play.

They are like the grammar of a living language, where those of a finite game are like the rules of debate.

This is equivalent to saying that no limitation may be imposed against infinite play. Since limits are taken into play, the play itself cannot be limited.

Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.

the satire of the putative ideal of oppressors in Huxley’s Gammas, Orwell’s Proles, and Rossum’s Universal Robots (Capek).

The oppressor exists as the oppressed are willing to be oppressed as opposed to paying the price for non-submission.

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.

Important point. We often purposefully forget why we are playing the game in order to play. Over time, as we evolve, we forget that we even had a choice in the first place.

It is in the nature of acting, Shaw said, that we are not to see this woman as Ophelia, but Ophelia as this woman.

“To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe” (Sartre).

infinite players do not eschew the performed roles of finite play. On the contrary, they enter into finite games with all the appropriate energy and self-veiling, but they do so without the seriousness of finite players.

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

Good one

an infinite game cannot be abstracted, for it is not a part of the whole presenting itself as the whole, but the whole that knows it is the whole.

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.

Surprise causes finite play to end; it is the reason for infinite play to continue.

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.

then the players are not properly alive. They are competing for life. Life, then, is not play, but the outcome of play. Finite players play to live; they do not live their playing. Life is therefore deserved, bestowed, possessed, won. It is not lived. “Life itself appears only as a means to life” (Marx).

The contradiction is precisely that all finite play is play against itself.

Not sure I get this point.