Metagaming

In the many different video game communities of modern gaming culture, the word metagame is a well-known and often used terminology to describe various forms of gameplay. While in particular game contexts the term is broadly used in a self-explanatory way, a precise definition and differentiation is still unclear. In the academic field, this concept has been approached from several perspectives. This page intents to summarize at least some of these intertwining concepts, to give a brief overview about the ongoing development of a clearer academic understanding, about how one can define metagame in context of digital game studies and finally, how to differentiate the many aspects, that are blackboxed in this seemingly universal label.

Introduction

To set a starting point, it is useful to look at a short excerpt from an interview with Stephanie Boluk und Patrick LeMieux, the authors of the book Metagaming - Playing, Competing, Spectating, Cheating, Trading, Making, and Breaking Videogames (2017), which captures the core problem of the topic:

“[…] what do players mean when they say metagame? This word pops up again and again in live commentary and forum discussions around speedrunning, esports, competitive fighting games, massively multiplayer online games, and virtual economies as well as in conversations around collectible card games, tabletop role-playing games, and board games. So we started by wondering if metagame referred to a specific technique, a historical practice, a personal preference, a community culture, or just play in general? Does it mean the same thing across different gaming discourses or is it dependent on context? Is it a productive lens for thinking about videogames or does it pose a challenge to the ways we talk about technical media? And the answer is, as you might imagine, a bit of all the above.”

An Etymological Derivation & The Prefix Meta-

According to Boluk and LeMieux, even it is used this frequently, the word metagame has no appearance in any accessible dictionary. So, to get a first understanding, it makes sense to take a closer look to the etymology of the word itself.

Deriving from the ancient Greek, the word or preposition meta has several meanings. Defined as something behind, beyond, with, after or across etc., in its self-referential characteristic, the prefix meta- “signifies […] the term or concept it precedes” in a proportion of X about X. For example a film about a film, data about data or in this case, a game about a game. Like Boluk and LeMieux describe, as “a signifier for everything occurring before, after, between, and during games as well as everything located in, on, around, and beyond games, the metagame anchors the game in time and space.”

Main Part

Richard Garfield's Definiton

Observing the academic discourse that covers research about metagame in the field of game studies, authors like the before mentioned Boluk and LeMieux almost always recur to the definition attempt in the 90es of the game designer and creator of the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering (1993) Richard Garfield.

Coming from a, in his own words, hopelessly idealistic perspective, to look at each played game as a sort of isolated conflict, he realized the huge impact that the surrounding structure has, in which a game is embedded and “how strongly that structure was backed by other people”.

His definition of metagame is: How a game interfaces with life.

„A particular game, played with the exact same rules will mean different things to different people, and those differences are the metagame.“

He then presents his further differentiation, which ties in with the etymological background of the prefix meta-:

• What you bring to a game. (e.g., equipment like Magic decks and tennis rackets but also personal abilities)

• What you take away from a game. (e.g., prize pool, tournament rankings, or social status)

• What happens between games. (e.g., preparation, strategizing, storytelling)

• What happens during a game, other than the game itself. (e.g., trash talking, time outs, and the environmental conditions of play)

To keep it as short as possible, Boluk’s and LeMieux’s analyses of Garfield’s definition culminates in the understanding, that the metagame - as how a game interfaces with life - is “[…] the only kind of game we play” and “[…] not just how games interface with life: it is the environment within which games ‘live’ in the first place. Like Mark Hansen’s […] definition of media as ‘an environment for life,’ metagames are an environment for games.”

Alternate Histories of Play – Videogames as Equipment for Metagames

Following a more social-philosophical approach, in which metagaming is the process of human activity to play any kind of game, Boluk and LeMieux raise the question whether video games, as technological artifacts, could be considered not as games in the first place, but rather as equipment for making metagames instead. By stating that “from the position in front of the television, posture on the couch, and proprioception of the controller to the most elaborate player-created constraints, fan practices, and party games, metagames are the games created with videogames”, the authors draw the metagame as a material trace emerging out of the “discontinuity between the phenomenal experience of play and the mechanics of digital games”. Its this, what they describe as alternate histories of play “and although everyone alive may be engaged in playing elaborate games, these games remain hidden from view. We don’t simply play games, but constantly (and unconsciously) make metagames.”

Metagame Ontology

The researcher Michael S. Debus provides a more detailed overview of the various forms of metagame and connections with other related concepts of digital games in his work Metagame: The Ontology of Games Outside of Games (2017). Debus attempts to work out an ontology of metagames to serve as a basis for future research. While keeping in mind that such ontological elaboration, working with abstract heuristic models to frame fluid processes comes with many difficulties, the following presents his five subcategories of metagames: The social metagame, the added metagame, the material metagame, the strategy metagame and the rule metagame. He sets the metagame in generell as an opposing term to the orthogame (as the original program code and its virtual representation), deriving from Carter's et al. analyses of EVE Online, and also refers to Garfield's definition attempt. His main focus is on metagame as a form of higher strategy, like its commonly used in the electronic sport (E-Sport) scene and communities surrounding competitive games.

Theorycraft and Metagame

In such communities another terminology circulates and has become of academic interest: The term theorycraft originates out of the Starcraft community and was defined within the World of Warcraft (WoW) community as the “attempt to mathematically analyze the game mechanics in order to gain a better understanding of the inner workings of the game.” Therefore it has a large impact on the process of how a game is played and in this sense theorycraft relates to the metagame, as the game outside of the game. But Debus, as well as the researchers he refers to, considers the practice of theorycrafting “neither equivalent to, nor completely distinct from metagaming, but as residing within its core, or in other words, as a component of it.” In short, he defines theorycraft as the method and theorycrafting as the actual practice of these method to develop a strategy. And in this certain relationship the developed strategy now can be seen as a produced metagame and finally metagaming as the actual execution of the developed strategy. He also states that there are “[...] generally two different types of metagaming. One is the application of strategies to one’s own play-style, such as different tactics for specific maps. The other is manifested in the development of tools, such as addons and other software, to improve play.”

Interesting to mention is that, in regard to Karin Wenz, Debus describes theorycrafting as scientification of gameplay. Another author, Faltin Karlsen, draws the same line in his work about this topic, when he states: “Theorycrafting is a phenomenon that intersects with several different academic approaches to games. Being an activity where knowledge and learning are core qualities, it also relates to studies of other types of learning communities.”

Social Metagame

As social metagame Debus subsumes “any act, process or (abstract) object that is closely related to the game, but is of a general social nature.” He lists networking in generell, therefore gaming communities seemingly in any kind of form. In his list can be found, for example, contacts to join alliances for collaborations, like in WoW, where “it is only possible to fight the strongest bosses in raids that are well organized.” Communities for discussing and developing strategys (theorycrafting), however, he doesn't lists as metagames, but as “communities, which develop the material, rule or strategy metagame.” Nonetheless, they can be located in the social metagame.

Added Metagame

The added metagame includes any additional content to the original game (orthogame), like high scores, achievements or league structures in electronic sports. “While some of these might also be considered frames in social metagames [...], they are different, as the added content sets specific, competitive structures and goals, while the social frames are merely themes within which a game is played ‘as usual’.”

Material Metagame

He relates the material metagame to material things, immaterial knowledge or social actions. Drafting an army before a match in Warhammer 40.000, as well as choice of equipment, like mouse and keyboard can be found in his list. Also the choice of specific software, which connects to add-ons or modding in a broader sense. He takes to consideration that “such an addition has a potentially larger impact on the act of playing than material equipment in a ‘real life sport’”, for example the choice of shoes in soccer or rackets in tennis.

Strategy Metagame

The strategy metagame is characterized as a practice outside of the game that attempts to affect real life conditions to influence in-game events, not to be confused with the rule metagame below. For example trash talking or verbal harassment in in-game chats to demoralize the opponent or in a more specific case “[...] the timing of attacks when the victim is potentially offline, due to different time zones or real-life habits (such as working during the day or sleeping at night) [...]”, in browser games like Ogame or Tribal Wars, for example, which are always running at day and night.

Rule Metagame

The rule metagames are “prescriptive rules that emerge, through discussion and application of the community, out of the original rules of the game.” This category subsumes what is common seen as playing the metagame in almost every competitive gaming community: It is how to play the game. Debus describes them as abstract entities, created trough the process of theorycraft and are “[...] rather a set of unspoken rules than manifest objects.”

For a more detailed elaboration on this topic based on a game, see League of Legends

Discussing the Metagame Ontology

Based on Michael S. Debus Metagame Ontology – created by s.o.

Starting with the social metagame, it looks like (as social is a very broad term) it surrounds the original game in many aspects and could be connected to the overarching metagame theme, Boluk and LeMieux describe, when they speak about metagames as an environment for games. The graphic on the right next to this text is the attempt to establish a visible map, using the terms of Debus.

Debus has stated that the practice of theorycrafting (which can arguably be located in the realms of the social metagame) develops material, strategy as well as rule metagames, and consequently takes influence on the orthogame or at least how players engage with and within its game mechanics. In this case those three metagames seem to evolve out of the social metagame and enter into or influence the orthogame, as some sort of transitional intermediate process. The two-way arrows implicate, that it is nonetheless a reciprocal relation of mutually dependent aspects.

As pointed out earlier, the social metagame category of Debus seems to conflate somehow with his added metagame category, but there are reasonable arguments to differentiate those two. Could the added metagame be seen as a form of transition zone as well, where the social metagame intervene into the orthogame and transforms or expands it through additional implemented technical components, as league systems and achievements, up to forming a professional international e-sport culture with championships, for example in MOBA's like League of Legends?

In this case, and this is where the problematic of the heuristic model becomes present, where to really differentiate the added and the material metagame, if the material metagame covers “choice of additional software.” Of course, one might differ official additions like league systems, from personal additions in the realms of modifications, but this isn't the distinction to make here, because the terms called added and material. Debus defines the added metagame as “[...] additional content that was added to the original (or ortho-) game.” Therefore it implies that there can't be a significant difference between material metagame (material things are also added in some way), except we consider the word choice as crux of the matter. Here it might be usefull to pick up again the difference of metagame and metagaming: If metagaming is the actual practice, then the choice of something refers only to the question, wether it is a thing or its actual practice/usage or even its creation. So this suits both categories in the same way. Only the choice of equipment, like mouse and keyboard, doesn't fit in this argumentation in the first place. But couldn't the actual structure of a league system or, for example, the in-game achievement structure, as a choice to be made, seen in a similar way? Maybe the one outstanding difference of Debus distinction is, in hindsight, indeed between official, every-player-affecting addition and subjective personal addition of (im)material things. In the graphic, material metagame and added metagame intersect at their borders. One can argue, that they should by summarized in an added material metagame and than subdivided again in this new distinction.

The rule metagame is the only category in this graphic, which is completely located in the center of the orthogame. That is deceptive. The arrows, however, intend that the rule metagame as an immaterial thing, as already mentioned, is produced through theorycrafting, hence it evolves out of the social metagame environment. As an immaterial thing it can't really be localized: It can only be tied back to traces of the theorycraft or be observed in an actual game. Also interesting is, when Debus refers to material metagame as choice im immaterial knowledge, the divers rule metagames could come to mind. So, one could draw the line from theorycraft out of the social metagame through the material metagame transitionzone into the in-game action.

Conclusion

It is important to point out that the presented research approaches only draw a narrow trace of the scientific discourse dealing with metagaming. Therefore, there is room for further approaches that can provide a more complete picture. Also authors like Boluk and LeMeuix offer a much wider spectrum in their book, which have been left out for the time being. Their research approach could therefore be outsourced in the future in order to deepen their work. The metagame ontology from Debus is a profound fundament, but still lacks of further differentiation. Some of these points were addressed in the discussion part, however, a more in-depth study of this ontology is necessary.