Metagame

A metagame broadly defined as "a game beyond the game", typically refers to either of two concepts: a game which revolves around a core game; or the strategies and approaches to playing a game. A metagame can serve a broad range of purposes, and may be tied to the way a game relates to various aspects of life.

In competitive games, the metagame can refer to the most popular strategy, often called a game's meta, or preparation for a match in general.

In tabletop role-playing games, metagaming has been used to describe players discussing the game, sometimes simply rules discussions and other times causing the characters they control to act in ways they normally would not within the story. It is alternately claimed that the first known use of the term was in Nigel Howard's book Paradoxes of Rationality: Theory of Metagames and Political Behavior published in 1971, where Howard used the term in his analysis of the Cold War political landscape using a variation of the Prisoner's Dilemma., however Howard used the term in Metagame Analysis in Political Problems published in 1966. In 1967, the word appeared in a study by Russell Lincoln Ackoff and in the Bulletin of the Operations Research Society of America.

Casual gaming

In casual gaming, the metagame generally refers to any meaningful interaction between players and elements not directly part of the game. The opposite metagame of playing a relatively unknown strategy for surprisal is often called off-meta. The metagame may also come within player communities as reactions to win over currently-popular strategies, creating ebbs and flows of strategy types over time.

Metagaming and cheating

In competitive games, more pervasive forms of metagaming like teaming in free-for-all multiplayer games can be interpreted as cheating or as bad sportsmanship. Writer Richard Garfield's book, Lost in the Shuffle: Games Within Games, considers instead teaming as just a form of metagaming. The practice of losing individual games to dodge stronger opponents in tournaments has also been interpreted as a form of metagaming,

In roguelikes

Roguelikes often gate content behind completion of basic runs, usually to convey a sense of progression and/or not to inundate less experienced players with too many choices. This is usually referred to as the "metaprogression" of the game.

In chess

The chess metagame has developed over time to include particularly effective opening moves and reactions to them. However, since the game rules themselves are static, the metagame does not evolve in the same ways it does for games where the rules are regularly updated by developers.

As in other games, chess can also involve a metagame in which players use their knowledge of how the game is being played in a larger competitive context, beyond the rules of the game itself. Researchers identified a set of games in which players may have colluded in early rounds of chess tournaments to obfuscate player strength for a matchmaking advantage in later rounds.

In tabletop games

In tabletop role-playing games, metagaming can refer to aspects of play that occur outside of a given game's fictional universe. In particular, metagaming often refers to having an in-game character act on knowledge that the player has access to, but the character should not. For example, having a character bring a mirror to defeat Medusa when they are unaware her gaze can petrify them, or being more cautious when the game is run by a merciless gamemaster.

Some consider metagaming to benefit oneself to be bad sportsmanship. It is frowned upon in many role-playing communities, as it upsets suspension of disbelief, and affects game balance. However, some narrativist indie role-playing games deliberately support metagaming and encourage shared storytelling among players.

Game development

The metagame for game developers refers to the extra set of rules and logic that are independent of the core gameplay. This can involve extra progressions or an economic market appended to the core gameplay that add mid- and long-term goals for players. Some researchers argue that having a metagame for players can increase user engagement with those games.