7 February 2025 
11 mins Chapter 1: There are at least two kinds of games
Carse starts by putting forth his axioms - there are two kinds of games - finite (played for the purpose of winning) and infinite (played for the purpose of continuing to play). Games, as the author puts it, is when the outcome or the future is unknown.
Finite games have a definitive end when a winner is declared i.e when all other players concur on the winning player. This agreement among the players - not the referees nor the spectators - is the only requirement to identify the winner and immediately end the game.
The agreement of the players to the applicable rules constitutes the ultimate validation of those rules. ... There are no rules that require us to obey rules. If there were, there would have to be a rule for those rules, and so on.
This implies that the finite games are played when the players freely choose to play it i.e the status of winner is still up for grabs and can't be forced. The moment the players have agreed to play, the game has begun. Finite games have a definitive temporal boundaries. Such boundaries - temporal, spatial, and numerical a.k.a rules- are defined externally. Each finite game is therefore identified by its boundaries and rules. As such the author called them theatrical.
The license never belongs to the licensed, not the commission to the officer.
Infinite players choose to continue to play for the purpose of playing (i.e prevent it from coming to an end) and any value they may derive from it. Therefore both finite and infinite games are completely voluntary. A player who is forced to play a game is no longer a player.
Infinite games are in stark contrast to finite counterpart. Infinite players do not care about the temporal boundaries - there are none. As such, infinite games are internally defined.
The time of an infinite game is not world time, but time created within the play itself. Since each play of an infinite game eliminates boundaries, it opens to players a new horizon of time.
Similarly, the infinite game is played within the space created within itself.
While finite games have fixed rules that do not change during the course of play, rules of infinite games must change - especially when the players agree on the impending end of the infinite game. The author calls these games as dramatic. One cannot say that the infinite games are pointless as the rules change, they may still play towards a meaningful goal - usually abstract. A wonderful example for an infinite game is the grammar of a living language. The point of grammar is to evolve to incorporate its existing and new speakers (players) and to guarantee the meaningfulness of discourse.
The rules of infinite games are always defined to deal with specific threats to the continuation of play. The players find and agree upon rules to prevent the boundaries from closing in on them. The challenge in infinite games to confront and tackle the powerful boundaries such as physical exhaustion, material scarcity, and death. It is in this sense the game is infinite - no limitations may be imposed against infinite play.
Each finite game on the other hand, is played to end itself - leading to an interesting irony.
Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.
A fascinating development is the process surrounding finite games - selection of players, a sense of competition and a compulsion to win, experienced necessity to stay in the struggle, and the price of winning or not playing. Because of these reasons, finite players may often not realize that they are playing freely and voluntarily and therefore the limitations, boundaries, and rules are self-imposed.
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.
Infinite players, while playing finite games as part of their play - should completely adhere to tenets of that finite game, still realizing the abstractness and their role. They are finite players in the finite game within the temporal boundaries set. As such, a sense of seriousness and faithfulness is required in playing games.
It is, in fact, 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.
... an infinite game cannot be abstracted (in Hegel's sense), for it is not a part of the whole presenting itself as the whole, but the whole that knows it is the whole. 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.
Recall that during the course of the finite game, the outcome is still uncertain - it is dramatic. Each player's immediate motivation is to making the preferred end inevitable. 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. As such a finite player is must anticipate every future possibility and to control the future. The infinite player, on the other hand, plays with the future, expecting to be surprised; as if no surprise is possible, all play ceases. They play in complete openness and vulnerability.
To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.
Education discovers an increasing richness in the past, because it sees what is unfinished there. Training regards the past as finished and the future as to be finished. Education leads toward a continuing self-discovery; training leads toward a final self-definition.
Training repeats a completed past in the future. Education continues an unfinished past into the future.
Death in life is a mode of existence in which one has ceased all play; there is no further striving for titles. All competitive engagement with other has been abandoned. For some, death in life is a misfortune, the resigned acceptance of a loser's status, a refusal to hold any title up for recognition. For others, however, death in life can be regarded as an achievement, the result of a spiritual discipline, say, intended to extinguish all traces of struggle with the world, a liberation from the need for any title whatsoever. " Die before ye die", declare sufi mystics.
Infinite players die in the course of play and not at the end of play. Death is defeat in finite play while an infinite player offer their death as a way of continuing the play. They do not play for themselves but to continue to play in others. Infinite players play best when they become least necessary to the continuation of play.
It (Immortality) is a state of unrelieved theatricality. An immortal soul is a person who cannot help by continue living out a role already scripted. An immortal person could not choose to die nor, for the same reason, choose to live.
Because an infinite player foresees all possible futures, it strengthens them - allowing the other players to do what they wish in the course of the play.
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 refers to the freedom persons have within limits, strength to the freedom persons have with limits.
Chapter 2: No one can play a game alone
One cannot be human by oneself. There is no selfhood where there is no community. We do not relate to others as the persons we are; we are who we are in relating to others.
Infinite games prescribe that only that which can change can continue. These players realize the fluidity of our humanness where life is an infinite game. Sentiments such as heroism, patriotism and so on are seen with their self-contradictions in full display and theatricality. However, if these infinite players choose to engage in such finite games as warfare, politics, or the act of simply engaging in a society, they must do so with the necessary seriousness.
...it is often the strategy of a society to initiate and embrace a culture as exclusively its own. Culture so bounded may even be so lavishly subsidized and encouraged by society that it has the appearance of open-ended activity, but in fact it is designed to serve societal interests in every case.
It is essential to the identity of a society to forget that it has forgotten that society is always a species of culture. its citizens must find ways of persuading themselves that their own particular boundaries have been imposed on them, and were not freely chosen by them.
As such, societies must and will provide as many titles or rewards as possible for the winners within that society - the winners then go on to be memorialized and are often identified with that society. Such tiles naturally give way to power, and properties. A crucial part of the society emerges - the ones who frame titles, design / produce properties, memorials, those who remember what has been forgotten - the poietai or simply the creative artists. Winning players leverage these artist players to suit their agenda - Alexander and Napoleon took their poets with them to battle to enlarge their triumph.
What confounds a society is not serious opposition, but the lack of seriousness altogether.
Art, or the activity of art itself is an infinite game (has no outcome, no conclusion) and the players often straddle the boundaries of the finite games - like society, warfare etc. Art is often considered dangerous as the titles, properties and memorials may be ridiculed and the such finite games may not find audience nor players.
Since art is never possession, and always a possibility, nothing possessed can have the status of art. If art cannot become property, property is never art-as property.
...poets do not "fit" into society, not because a place is denied them but because they do not take their "places" seriously. They openly see its roles as theatrical, its styles as poses, its clothing costumes, its rules conventional, its crises arranged, its conflicts performed, and its metaphysics ideological.
Infinite games, however, may have horizons. THis means, the players cannot see beyond the horizon. THere is nothing in the horizon itself that limits the vision, for the horizon opens onto all that lies beyond itself. What limits the vision is the incompleteness of the vision. Because of such horizons, infinite games such as culture may appear to have boundaries.
