Playing from Behind
Jemaa el-Fnaa, the main square of Marrakesh, closed for construction. Morocco is hosting the Africa Cup of Nations in just a few months, and construction is a regular sight.
“Playing from behind” is a common expression in competitive multiplayer games where early rewards lead to more rapid accumulation of future rewards as the game progresses. To “play from behind” well, players focus on defensive plays such as resource management, territorial control, and information optimization instead of offensive actions. In popular culture, the “Moneyball” Athletics effectively played from behind by managing financial resources and focusing on critical metrics. The concept is similar to “playing out from the back” in soccer, and was popularized by online video games.
For years, I felt like I was constantly playing from behind. I suppose it started that spring evening, thirteen years ago when I released a rough-laced piece of cowhide wrong and, with it, came a little piece of my shoulder. I realized my mistake when I prayed for months, and the muscles still ached. I was too proud to tell my dad that I didn’t want to pitch anymore, and for years every time I pushed up on a bench press, I was reminded how far behind I had fallen.
When you’re playing from behind, the motivation is brutally powerful. Pressure pushes against you from the bottom, demanding you move up. From above, you’re crushed down by those who can keep stacking more weight on top of their already heavy burden. Every day playing from behind is a day under siege. The easiest way to survive is to find a shallower pond, an easier weight to carry, a simpler task. It is easiest to be forced out to the sides.
Yet once you start playing from behind, it is hard to stop. You become a human under pressure, kept in balance and under control by your context, by powers greater and stronger than you. As religion preaches, you find the beauty in service and submission to God and accept the pressure. As human nature demeans, you become an animal that must be externally controlled, because you cannot control yourself. You are a victim of your own struggle.
As we truly play from behind, with all our passion and all our strength despite our handicap, we inevitably grow. Our growth starts small, but it is noticeable. We begin to lose recognition in the mirror, as we see the compounding of hard hours on our faces, or in our muscles, or in the microscopic changes in our expressions and our posture. Sometimes, it can be terrifying, seeing our bodies worn down by a growth that we do not understand, an intimately foreign abomination, indistinguishable from a tumor. Other times it is exhilarating.
One day, after playing from behind for years, we aren’t behind anymore. Years spent in the fortress under siege break into a sunny day. Countless hours spent focused on defense and security, now can be used on growth and progress. Hours in the gym grow into muscle, books turn into ideas, knowledge into power. We exit into the light, and sometimes, it blinds us back into our caves.
Winning is a struggle of its own. Each finite game, each temporary battle, is stretched across an infinite canvas of time. There are always another nine innings, always a heavier weight, or another field to rise in. The rules must change to keep the game going, and so they change. Companies devise new metrics, nation-states enact new laws, economists propose new theories, and CEO’s demand new algorithms.
The MLB shaves a few more seconds off the pitch clock. The next year, Shohei Ohtani makes history, hitting 55 homeruns and throwing 62 strikeouts in just one season.
To survive success, winners must continue to adapt. To survive playing from behind, losers must master the rules. When does a loser become a winner? In the infinite game, only when the last winners cannot adapt to the new rules. The rules continue to change, and no one truly wins the infinite game.
One way that winners adapt is to play down their strengths. They fake incompetence, or ignorance, to secure their position through appearing weak. By appearing to not be a threat, winners can disincentivize their competition from rigorous training and practice. This is a double-edged sword. Winners might end up in a dilemma in which they are not gaining strength, enabling a dark horse contender to quickly gain power through changing the rules (See the 2025 New York Mayoral Race or the post-Cold War United States, Europe, and the rise of China).
There’s a question here of parity. For a game to remain infinite, the appearance of a level playing field is vital. Players must be continually incentivized to play by the rules and not to undermine or devise new ones. In stable infinite games, present winners are rewarded for their achievements to incentivize future winners, and present losers believe that they have a chance to become winners who will receive those incentives.
This doesn’t mean that winners always lie about the parity. A winner who is deeply convinced that they won fairly is one of the best advocates for an infinite game. However, this same winner, when rewarded outrageously, becomes one of the game’s worst enemies. The anger against CEO’s who criticize a family’s carbon footprint when flying in Jumbo-Jets shows how excessive rewards create systemic animosity. Communist sentiment among New Yorkers who continue to live in a decaying city, no matter how hard they work, shows how minimal rewards destroy participation. The appearance of parity must extend beyond the conditions and into rewards as well.
How then do we win fairly? Mankind cannot devise a better system, a better game than the one we call life, played together on Earth. There is a level of randomness that we just have not grasped, and further levels that we perhaps never will. It would be irresponsible to intentionally build systemic chaos into our schools, our churches, or our governments, but if we were to do so, it might make our systems more stable in the long run. The only thing that ensures victory is continued struggle.
I still am used to playing from behind, but unless I am comfortable with the idea of winning, I will stop improving altogether.
The entrance to The Museum of Water Civilization in Marrakech. On the day I visited with my friend Reda, we were the only two visitors in the building.
Outdoor models of historical water transportation and irrigation techniques
A water fountain known as a “drink and look” (shuuf wu shrrb) that can be found around Marrakesh. Public access to water is an important part of Islam, and local water rights are managed by semi-religous authorities known as the Jma’a councils.
