Finite and Infinite Games

Highlights

• The joyfulness of infinite play, its laughter, lies in learning to start something we cannot finish.
  • Tags: happiness
• A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.
• It is an invariable principle of all play, finite and infinite, that whoever plays, plays freely. Whoever must play, cannot play.
• Infinite players cannot say when their game began, nor do they care.
• While finite games are externally defined, infinite games are internally defined.
• Infinite players regard their wins and losses in whatever finite games they play as but moments in continuing play.
• Rules are not valid because the Senate passed them, or because heroes once played by them, or because God pronounced them through Moses or Muhammad. They are valid only if and when players freely play by them.
• 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.
• Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.
• 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 whatever they do they must do.
• The constant attentiveness of finite players to the progress of the competition can lead them to believe that every move they make they must make.
• 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.
• The issue is whether we are ever willing to drop the veil and openly acknowledge, if only to ourselves, that we have freely chosen to face the world through a mask.
• Seriousness always has to do with an established script, an ordering of affairs completed somewhere outside the range of our influence.
• 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.
• To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself.
• Surprise causes finite play to end; it is the reason for infinite play to continue.
• To the degree that one is protected against the future, one has established a boundary and no longer plays with but against others.
• The finite play for life is serious; the infinite play of life is joyous. Infinite play resounds throughout with a kind of laughter.
• 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.
• It is evil to assume that the past will make sense only if we bring it to an issue we have clearly in view.
• It is in the interest of a society therefore to encourage competition within itself, to establish the largest possible number of prizes, for the holders of prizes will be those most likely to defend the society as a whole against its competitors.
• Culture, however, does not consider the works as the outcome of a struggle, but as moments in an ongoing struggle—the very struggle that culture is.
• Those who challenge the existing pattern of entitlements in a society do not consider the designated officers of enforcement powerful; they consider them opponents in a struggle that will determine by its outcome who is powerful.
• Property is appropriately compensatory whenever owners can show that what is gained is no more than what was expended in the effort to acquire it.
• What confounds a society is not serious opposition, but the lack of seriousness altogether.