There are at least two kinds of games, the religious scholar James Carse explained: “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.”
Carse’s aphoristic 1986 book, Finite and Infinite Games, is not really about games. It’s a book about life and the way that you can aim for narrow, selfish and, ultimately, empty domination — or you can play collaboratively and open-endedly, for the joy of being alive. (For those of us who were watching Saturday-morning cartoons in 1986 instead of reading philosophy books, think of it like this: the real treasure is the friends we make along the way.)
Finite and Infinite Games acquired a cult following, but I didn’t pick it up hoping for advice about a life well lived. I was hoping to learn something about games, a subject on which James Carse has less to say than I expected. No matter. Christmas is coming, often a time for grim and interminable sessions of Monopoly, so on the topic of games, perhaps I should offer some distinctions of my own.
Start with the difference between a formal and an informal game — say, a timed game of football on a marked pitch with a referee, versus a kickabout in the park, with jumpers for goalposts. The formal game seems superior, but in his book Free to Learn, psychologist Peter Gray highlights the hidden strengths of an informal one. In an informal game between children, everyone must be kept happy. If enough players stop wanting to play, the game will end. To keep the game going, players must compromise, empathise and accommodate younger, weaker or less skilful playmates. If different children arrive and leave, people must switch sides to adjust, evening up the numbers and the skill levels: the tribalism of “them and us” is alien to informal play.
No such luck in a formal game, where those who are having a miserable time on the losing team are obliged to keep going until the final whistle blows. (“There is no finite game unless the players freely choose to play it,” wrote Carse, demonstrating no recollection of school games lessons.) There is nothing intrinsically wrong with a formal game for children or for adults, but we learn many life skills in the informal ones.
A second distinction that matters is that between a closed and an open game. Most card games and board games are closed: the rules of poker, chess or Monopoly specify exactly what moves are legal at any stage of the game. These rules can vary a great deal; poker offers a vast collection of rewarding variants, and Monopoly is often played according to house rules. But whatever variant you choose, the rules are intended to leave no space for ambiguity.
A word to the wise about house rules in Monopoly. The most common ones inject more cash into the game, while omitting the rule that if you land on a property and don’t buy it, it is immediately sold at auction. These house rules slow the game down terribly, making a slow game even slower. Try the official rules this Christmas. Better still, play Catan, which is the building-and-trading game that Monopoly dreams of being. Catan was one of the first breakout successes of the modern “eurogame” style of board games, which emphasise fast-paced play, interesting decisions, an elegant balance of skill and luck, and are often finished in well under an hour.
Some closed games, such as go, produce strategic depth from a short list of rules. Others, such as the Kriegsspiel war-games favoured by the Prussian officer class in the 19th century, become fussy and bogged down with special cases. It was the hidebound artificiality of Kriegsspiel that provoked a rebellion in Prussian strategists and the development of an open game as an alternative. Free Kriegsspiel, proposed by the Prussian General Verdy in 1876, has no rules at all, just two opposing players and a referee. A battlefield scenario is dreamt up, the players tell the referee the tactics they plan to use — anything from an artillery bombardment to a disinformation campaign — and the referee uses common sense and experience to arbitrate. The central insight of Free Kriegsspiel is that a referee can liberate a game instead of being an enforcer of strict rules.
Almost a century after Verdy proposed Free Kriegsspiel, his idea evolved into another open game: role-playing games, which also rely on a referee to adjudicate. Such games can be rules-light or rules-heavy, but they allow more freedom of action than any rules could cover. With players assuming the roles of fictional protagonists, these games add improvised drama to their war-gaming roots and have as much variety as fiction. They can be serious or cartoonish, last an hour or stretch for ever like a soap opera, and they play with highbrow and lowbrow ideas, just as a novel might.
I’ve written before about my love of games, but I am particularly fond of open, informal games. For a shy person such as myself, they provide enough structure to support my efforts at social interaction, without confining that social interaction to something impossibly narrow. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my oldest, firmest friends are the ones with whom I played open games. Nor is it a surprise that many of us still play those game games together 30 or even 40 years after we started.
Not that I’m telling you to play a role-playing game such as Vaesen or Blades in the Dark this Christmas. That’s what I’ll be doing, but open games are not for everyone. If a closed game is like solving a crossword puzzle, an open game is like writing a poem — and writing a poem is an intimidating prospect. But I’d encourage you to play something. If you do it right, even Monopoly can be fun.
Written for and first published in the Financial Times on 15 December 2023.
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