If someone invites you to play with an overture (a mild good-natured insult, tossing a ball at you...), you can accept in 2 ways: 1. Infer and play by implied rules (assuming you’re socialized enough to know them) 2. Take advantage of the underspecification to “win” in 1 move
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Finite games often have a trivial solution, where you could win in 1 move (or more generally, deterministically if you know a cheat). But playing efficiently to “finish” on top as fast as possible is not the point. The ludic goal is to maximize the mutual enjoyment of company.
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People voluntarily handicap themselves in order to make a game of it. For example a taller person might forgo dunking versus a shorter person in some for-fun 1:1 basketball. You create uncertainty to make sure the fun can last long enough to satiate appetite for fun.
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In Homo Ludens reads this sort of thing as a “fairness” instinct. Finite games as divination of heavenly judgment of who is a better (as in more chosen by the gods, not skill). But that’s formal play. Not for-fun play which is about manufacturing fun.
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An adult playing with a child usually knows to limit themselves enough to create fun, but can often go too far: smaller children want easier wins, even for their skill level. They are upset by the challenge of “too much fun” potential.
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Reason for this little thread is that many otherwise competent people don’t seem to get how to “play twitter,” going for the win-in-one-move mic-drop interaction, rather than “playing along” to find the most satisfying banter chain.
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In a way “playing along” is the infinite game meta skill required to play finite games well. You’re trying to set yourself boundaries so the given finite game turns into the means of “continuing to play” the infinite game for a bit before you must find another finite game vehicle
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The opposite of knowing how to play along is being an unwitting spoilsport. Being intentionally a spoilsport is of course a different thing altogether, where your payoff is derived from others’ annoyance.
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A good illustration of this dynamic is in Futurama when Bender gets jealous of Nibbler and tries and fails to get the attention back on himselfhttp://www.cc.com/video-clips/ubbd92/futurama-nibbler-s-birthday …
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Replying to @vgr
I really enjoyed this thread. I think I unintentionally play many finite games. Are there any more examples or analogies you can share? TY!
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