Finite and Infinite Games

by James P. Carse

A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

If a finite game is to be won by someone it must come to a definitive end. It will come to an end when someone has won. We know that someone has won the game when all the players have agreed who among them is the winner. No other condition than the agreement of the players is absolutely required in determining who has won the game.

When Sherman burned his way from Atlanta to the sea, he so ignored the sense of spatial limitation that for many persons the war was not legitimately won by the Union Army, and has in fact never been concluded.

To have such boundaries means that the date, place, and membership of each finite game are externally defined.

Infinite players cannot say when their game began, nor do they care. They do not care for the reason that their game is not bounded by time. Indeed, the only purpose of the game is to prevent it from coming to an end, to keep everyone in play.

No world is marked with the barriers of infinite play, and there is no question of eligibility since anyone who wishes may play an infinite game.

infinite games are internal...

Finite games can be played within an infinite game, but an infinite game cannot be played within a finite game. Infinite players regard their wins and losses in whatever finite games they play as but moments in continuing play.

The rules of a finite game are the contractual terms by which the players can agree who has won.

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

oppressors themselves acknowledge that even the weakest of their subjects must agree to be oppressed.

Therefore, all the limitations of finite play are self-limitations.

Only freely can one step into the role of mother. Persons who assume this role, however, must suspend their freedom with a proper seriousness in order to act as the role requires.

infinite game, 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.

We are playful when we engage others at the level of choice, when there is no telling in advance where our relationship with them will come out—when, in fact, no one has an outcome to be imposed on the relationship, apart from the decision to continue it.

are playful with each other we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence.

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

By relating to others as they move out of their own freedom and not out of the abstract requirements of a role, infinite players are concrete persons engaged with concrete persons. For that reason 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 finite player is trained not only to anticipate every future possibility, but to control the future, to prevent it from altering the past. This is the finite player in the mode of seriousness with its dread of unpredictable consequence.

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

With each surprise, the past reveals a new beginning in itself. Inasmuch as the future is always surprising, the past is always changing.

All the moves of a finite player must be deceptive: feints, distractions, falsifications, misdirections, mystifications. 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 ceaseless growth, the dynamic self that has yet to be. The infinite player does not expect only to be amused by surprise, but to be transformed by it, for surprise does not alter some abstract past, but one’s own personal past.

How finite players play vs infinite players

What one wins in a finite game is a title. A title is the acknowledgment of others that one has been the winner of a particular game. Titles are public. They are for others to notice. I expect others to address me according to my titles, but I do not address myself with them—unless, of course, I address myself as an other. The effectiveness of a title depends on its visibility, its noticeability to others.

For that reason they do not play for their own life; they live for their own play. But since that play is always with others, it is evident that infinite players both live and die for the continuing life of others.

In infinite play one chooses to be mortal inasmuch as one always plays dramatically, that is, toward the open, toward the horizon, toward surprise, where nothing can be scripted. It is a kind of play that requires complete vulnerability. To the degree that one is protected against the future, one has established a boundary and no longer plays with but against others.

If ypure not bring totallyvalunerable are you playing a finite game?

The finite play for life is serious; the infinite play of life is joyous. Infinite play resounds throughout with a kind of laughter.

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 mode and content of address and the manner of behavior are recognitions of the areas in which titled persons are no longer in competition. There are precise ways in which one may no longer compete with the Dalai Lama or the Heavyweight Champion of the World. There is no possible action by which one may deprive them of their titles to contests now in the past. Therefore, insofar as we recognize their titles we withdraw from any contest with them in those areas.

The titled are powerful. Those around them are expected to yield, to withdraw their opposition, and to conform to their will—in the arena in which the title was won.

The exercise of power also presupposes a closed field and finite units of time. My power is determined by the amount of resistance I can displace within given spatial and temporal limits.

Power is a concept that belongs only in finite play. But power is not properly measurable until the game is completed—until the designated period of time has run out. During the course of play we cannot yet determine the power of the players, because to the degree that it is genuine play the outcome is unknown. A player who is being pushed all over the field by an apparently superior opponent may display an unsuspected burst of activity at the end and take the victory. Until the final hours of the count in the presidential election of 1948 many Americans thought that Harry Truman was a far weaker candidate than Thomas Dewey.

To speak meaningfully of a person’s power is to speak of what that person has already completed in one or another closed field. To see power is to look backward in time. Inasmuch as power is determined by the outcome of a game, one does not win by being powerful; one wins to be powerful. If one has sufficient power to win before the game has begun, what follows is not a game at all. One can be powerful only through the possession of an acknowledged title—that is, only by the ceremonial deference of others. Power is never one’s own, and in that respect it shows the contradiction inherent in all finite play. I can be powerful only by not playing, by showing that the game is over. I can therefore have only what powers others give me. Power is bestowed by an audience after the play is complete. Power is contradictory, and theatrical.

Because power is measurable only in comparative—that is, competitive—terms, it presupposes some kind of cooperation. If we defer to titled winners, it is only because we regard ourselves as losers. To do so is freely to take part in the theater of power.

All the limitations of finite play are self-limitations.

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.

where the finite player plays to be powerful the infinite player plays with strength.

Power is finite in amount. Strength cannot be measured, because it is an opening and not a closing act.

Strength is paradoxical. I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish as a result of my play with them, but because I can allow them to do what they wish in the course of my play with them.

The essence of volunteerism

Though infinite players are strong, they are not powerful and do not attempt to become powerful.

Infinite players understand the inescapable likelihood of evil. They therefore do not attempt to eliminate evil in others, for to do so is the very impulse of evil itself, and therefore a contradiction. They only attempt paradoxically to recognize in themselves the evil that takes the form of attempting to eliminate evil elsewhere. Evil is not the inclusion of finite games in an infinite game, but the restriction of all play to one or another finite game.

Only that which can change can continue: this is the principle by which infinite players live.

Before I can have an enemy, I must persuade another to recognize me as an enemy. I cannot be a hero unless I can first find someone who will threaten my life—or, better, take my life. Once under way, warfare and acts of heroism have all the appearance of necessity, but that appearance is but a veil over the often complicated maneuvers by which the antagonists have arranged their conflict with each other.

Deviancy, however, is the very essence of culture. Whoever merely follows the script, merely repeating the past, is culturally impoverished.

The purpose of property is to make our titles visible. Property is emblematic. It recalls to others those areas in which our victories are beyond challenge.

“The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the preservation of their Property; to which in the state of nature there are many things wanting” (Locke).

Only those who consent to a society’s constraints see them as constraints—that is, as guides to action and not as actions to be opposed.

Only by free self-concealment can persons believe they obey the law because the law is powerful; in fact, the law is powerful for persons only because they obey it. We do

It is apparent to infinite players that wealth is not so much possessed as it is performed.

Some societies develop the belief that they can eliminate thievery by guaranteeing all their members, including thieves, a certain amount of property—the impulse behind much social welfare legislation. But putting a coin into the pocket of the Artful Dodger will hardly convince him that he is no longer a legitimate contender for the coin in mine.

Infinite players have rules; they just do not forget that rules are an expression of agreement and not a requirement for agreement.