By Lo Chan Peng

I. And if you win, then what?

Since we were kids, we've spent an enormous amount of time learning how to win. On exams we beat the other kids. In competitions we beat the other kids. Once we enter the workforce, we have to beat our colleagues and our peers. Artists are no different. We want to win a prize, win a place in a show, win at auction, even win the view count.

There are plenty of courses on how to win. Almost nobody teaches you what to do after you've won.

An artist's career also has a strange feature: there's no finish line. When a show closes, you're back in the studio the next day. When a work sells, the easel is empty again. Win a prize this year and nobody will finish next year's painting for you because of it. Every contest gets settled, but once it's settled, you're still standing on the field.

So what I want to talk about today is a question that comes a step before "how to win": what kind of game are you actually playing?

II. Finite games

James P. Carse, an American scholar of religion, wrote a very slim book in 1986 called Finite and Infinite Games. It opens by splitting games into two kinds. A finite game is played in order to win. An infinite game is played in order to keep the game going.

Naval often talks about long-term games, and Simon Sinek wrote a whole book, The Infinite Game, so this idea has been explained many times already. I won't go through it again.

A finite game has opponents, rules, a moment of settlement, and in the end a confirmed winner. Look closely and the art world is full of them: an award, a show, an art fair, an auction, a sale, a press write-up, the peak of a video's views...

And finite games are necessary. Artists need to sell, exhibit, find collectors, and be seen, and all of that gets won one round at a time. I'm playing them myself, and honestly, I want to win. So when an artist tells me he only plays infinite games and doesn't care about winning or losing, I usually don't believe him. Either he hasn't really stepped onto the field yet, or he lost and found a nicer way to put it.

Pick the fruit.

What really needs thinking through is where you put the fruit once you've picked it.

III. Two scoreboards

Carse has a passage that gets quoted less often. The winner of a finite game receives a title, and for the title to hold, someone has to see it and acknowledge it. A champion nobody saw is, in a sense, a champion who never happened.

So finite games, by nature, need an audience.

Infinite games have none. There's no moment of settlement for anyone to gather around, so naturally no podium. The judgments you made in the studio over these ten years, the collaborations you turned down, the provocations you didn't answer: nobody is keeping score for you.

So an artist actually carries two scoreboards, like the ones in a baseball stadium.

One hangs outside. Views, likes, sale prices, prize lists, who passed whom. The numbers move every day and everyone can see them: your family, your peers, even people you've never met.

The other hangs inside. Has your judgment gotten a little sharper? Has your work dug one layer deeper? Have a few more people come to trust you? Only you can see this one, and when it truly lights up, it's usually ten years later.

So why do people keep chasing the outside one? I think the reason is simple. The outside board updates every day, the inside one lights up once every few years, and the eye is easily pulled toward whatever moves.

That also explains why online arguments never stop. An argument is a very pure finite game: two opponents, a crowd, and the crowd decides the winner on the spot. Every comment scores, every repost adds points. As long as the audience is there, the match goes on, because nobody wants to be the first to walk off in front of them.

IV. Victories that make you weaker

Some victories are dangerous. They make you look more successful today and leave you weaker ten years on.

You spend your credibility for traffic. You change your own judgment to please the market. You sell off a piece of your long-term position for a single burst of exposure. Or you spend huge amounts of time proving other people wrong just to prove yourself right.

Every one of these pays off in the short term, and the payoff is real. The numbers do go up, the money does come in, the opponent does get pushed down. On the outside scoreboard, you did win.

But on the inside board, you took the capital meant for the next game and used it to pay this game's bill.

What makes it worse is that this kind of win is hard to stop. The audience has a short memory. What you won today you have to win again tomorrow, or the game is over. Yet the capital you spent takes years to rebuild. So you're forced to keep playing finite games, forced to keep earning short-term traffic through controversy, and meanwhile your audience sorts itself: the ones who want a spectacle stay, the ones who believed in you leave. Once the controversy stops, traffic punishes you right away, and you can't quit. Every round is paid for with long-term trust. In a way, it's a traffic hell with no exit.

V. Victories that bet on the next game

So how do we decide whether a finite game is worth entering?

I think we should ask ourselves at least three things. First: if I win, what do I get? Second: if I lose, what do I lose? Third: even if I win, will this victory make my next game stronger or weaker?

Most people ask the first two. Almost no one asks the third, because its answer is written on the inside scoreboard.

Some victories end with a single settlement. You win a debate, everyone watches, and then the room empties. Or a wave of traffic comes, and then it recedes.

But other victories leave something behind. A truly important work enters a collection, and the next collector may come because of it. A show makes a curator remember your name, and three years later, while planning another exhibition, he thinks of you. Or one of your judgments is proven right by time, and the next time you speak, people no longer have to start from doubt.

The second kind raises the odds of your next win. In a sense, it has already placed a bet on your next game.

So my attitude toward finite games is simple: play them, and play to win, but before each one, work out whether it's worth the bet.

VI. Choosing your own game

A person can fight every finite game with everything he has, bet on the next game with every win, and tally every score correctly, and still end up playing the wrong game.

You can become the best at selling paintings, the one with the most traffic, the one who understands social media better than anyone, and win every contest you enter. Then one day you realize that the rules of all those contests were set by someone else. You won beautifully, but you won a game that had been designed for you long before you arrived.

Carse has another line: finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries. As I understand it, an infinite player has the power to decide which match to enter, the power to rewrite the rules, and even the power to decide that a particular match isn't worth showing up for.

Of course, if you don't show up, you score zero on the outside board.

But on the inside board, it can be the best entry of your whole year.

VII. What does today's win leave for tomorrow's you?

Everyone is placing bets every day. Some settle today, some pay out in ten years, and some won't be known for what they're worth until after you've left this world.

The outside scoreboard keeps flickering, and the stands keep filling with new people. The fight raging hardest today will probably be fought again next year by a different crowd.

So which match to play, whether it's worth playing, which to skip altogether: these decisions get recorded only on the inside board, the one only you can see.

VIII. How long does the game last?

There's one more question that has been sitting deep down the whole time I've been writing this.

If the win in one show is a bet on the next show, and the win in that show is a bet on the next ten years, then where does this chain of pushing things back finally end?

Most talk about infinite games ends up as a single sentence: don't stop, keep playing. That's not wrong. But if you stop there, you can easily become a machine that keeps running without knowing where it's headed. More works, more collectors, more income, more fame, more followers, every number on every scoreboard climbing. Then one day you realize the life you originally wanted is far behind you.

Finite games ask who won. Infinite games ask whether the game can go on. But what life finally asks, I think, is this:

What is your prize?

The answer isn't complicated. It may even be simple. Maybe you want a happy life. Enough assets that you never have to accept choices you don't want just to survive. Children who grow up able to walk their own road, and who, guided by you, carry what you built forward, generation after generation.

And before this life ends, a goal worth chasing with everything you have, one you actually chased.

Taken apart, these look like separate matches: one in the studio, one in the market, one at home. Put together, a line runs through them. Work feeds your life, and life holds up the work. The money you earn buys back your freedom to choose, and that freedom lets you do what really matters. The judgment you spent a lifetime sharpening becomes works, becomes writing, becomes something the next generation can inherit.

So what I now understand as an asset is whatever keeps moving forward after you're gone. A painting may only be truly understood after your death. A name may only gain weight slowly once you've left. A child may only begin to understand what you handed over when you can no longer be at his side. These are foundations you laid from the very beginning. Compounding. Only ever make the choices that compound.

And that may be why I think artists are especially suited to talk about infinite games. Our trade is used to placing bets somewhere we may never see the payout.

So before you reach the finish, how do you want to play this game of life?