by James P. Carse

"There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play."

To download a speech (1h27m) given by James Carse in Jan 2005 click here Religious War In Light of the Infinite Game (Note! Link is to 23MB Audio file!)

Calling all infinite players!

Human beings have been playing games for as far back as we can remember. The Aztecs and Mayans had their sacred games. High in the mountains of Afghanistan in the 19th and early 20th centuries the British and the Russians played "the Great Game" against each other, a game of politics, intrigue and empire. The language of games is of course part of our everyday vocabulary, we tend to think in terms of winners and losers, a beginning and an end, of goals and victory laps. When we hear the word "game" we tend to think of a sport, or entertainment, such as a game show. Games however have been a metaphor for our lives and work for many centuries. While some of our games today still retain an element of playfulness, many of them are increasingly characterized by the seriousness of war.

The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman argues that the popular game show, Big Brother, accurately mirrors the state of our society today. Locked up in a house, under constant observation, each of the contestants collaborates and work with each other, but below the surface of politeness it's ruthless competition driving their behaviour with the goal of winning being more important than any relationship. More people voted for the contestants of Big Brother than voted in the national elections in the United Kingdom. We are living a game. The question that Carse addresses is what the nature of that game is and what we might like it to be.

Carse points out that the way we commonly understand games is as finite games, that is, games played to win. He outlines another type of game, an infinite game, played for a different purpose, for the purposes of continuing play and of expanding the realm of play. The book's brilliance lies in giving us fresh insights into many aspects of our own lives that are normally difficult to think clearly and talk about, unless you're a professor of philosophy that is. These include notions of power and property, of culture and community and of stories and myth and their relevance to us.

Few books come along and give us, in under two hundred pages, an entirely new and intuitive set of lens with which to view reality from. I liked this book because it helped me see things from a different angle, in a different light. It helped me ask better questions and these questions in turn fuel my imagination. Is Pioneers of Change a finite or an infinite game? Is politics today a finite or an infinite game? Are politicians pretending to play an infinite game (of improving society for example) while in reality playing a very finite game? What does it mean for me to be an infinite player? What are the qualities of an infinite player?

This book is a must for anyone who's interested in doing things differently! Read it.

From the book:

"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 infinite play is that the players desire to bring the game 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."

• Reviewed by Zaid Hassan

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