metagame

the highest level of strategy in many complex games, metagame refers to any aspect of strategy that involves thinking about what your opponent is thinking you are thinking.

metagame comes into play in any game where no single strategy is dominant and opposing sides are aware of multiple strategies that can succeed dependent upon opponents’ actions. in order to perform at the highest level, it then becomes necessary to think about what your opponent thinks you will do (which may depend on what he thinks you think he thinks he will do, etc.) and to make decisions based on clues regarding what level they are thinking on.

this term is most commonly used to refer to poker and other complex card games, but is increasingly being used in relation to video games with complicated player vs player elements and even traditional sports.
normally i would raise the flop with this hand as a semi-bluff, but i’ve been so aggressive lately that taking metagame into consideration i think he will go all-in with any pair, so instead i’m going to fold.

this guy thinks that i’m going to zergling rush which means he will waste resources defending early. instead i am going to focus on resource development for mid game, and metagame will win me this match.
term used for card games. the act of changing your deck around to counter the majority of decks in the local tournament area.
the metagame in my area seems to battle against my type of deck.
a game within a game. like pazaak in knights of the old republic. or all video games within life.
when will these metagames end? each completed game only produces the question to the next game!
sub components of modern games that increase gameplay value without actually adding gameplay.

see achievements, or online rankings.
dude, there’s more to the world… of warcraft than the metagame
usually, metagamers are considered the elite gamers, who usually have been playing the game for the longest time period, and have the most skill and play the most compet-tively, the metagame is the environment that these compet-tive metagamers play in, in any given game, and the strategies used by those top compet-tive players.

the metagame is usually much more narrow then casual gaming, and there is often very little variation in strategy between metagamers because only the best are used.

metagame often involves strategies found or created by players, not just simple tactics designed by the game developers to intentionally be part of the game, while also playing by the standards other metagamers believe to be commonplace.

games such as mario bros or freeze tag usually lack a metagame, because the multiplayer aspect is limited, and/or there is little to no strategy or skill involved in the game, simple games in general usually lack or have a very small metagame, while more complex and compet-tive games usually have a larger metagame and a larger gap between strong and weak players.
in yugioh, the worlds most popular tcg-, the metagame consists mainly of lightsworn, vayu turbo, gladiator beasts, and several other top tier decks-, players using low tier decks such as legendary ocean decks-, usually would lose to the metagame decks within a few turns, due to the abilities, combos, and raw power, of the metagame decks.

person: “urgh i hate the meta, there is no originality and i always lose to them, everyone uses the exact same strategy”

in metroid prime hunters, which was considered the best fps on the ds for a long time, and still is arguably the best-, almost all metagamers would use the imperialist as a weapon, and sylux or trace as a character, most metagamers consider alt forms to be spammy and noobish, because they don’t take much skill to use and allow noobs to beat players who do not use alts but have significantly more skill.

-(at the time of this writing)
used often in the internet for online games, roleplaying boards, and chatroom’s. it is when a person reads what a character is doing, and thus -ssumes he knows everything what that character has done- without witnessing any of those events at all because a) his character was not there b)the action was in a different area of the rpg ‘world’ or c) the person is just a tool
how did you know that was me? i was in a disguise and put a disguise spell on- i don’t look like my normal character at all, you f-cking metagamer!