Metagame
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Metagame, literally "a game outside the game," is a prediction of how others will make decisions in a game based on their personality or their previous decisions. A metagame can exist in any game in which the opposition is human or portrays some sort of artificial intelligence and the competitors make choices. Metagaming is taking advantage of the metagame for purposes of winning more often.
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[edit] Examples of the Metagame
- In the movie The Princess Bride, a character is presented with two wine cups and is asked to drink out of one of them. He knows that one is poisoned but does not know which. He attempts to grasp the metagame by reasoning about his opponent's character, attempting to figure out which glass that sort of character would put the poison in.
- Competitor A's favorite number is six and all of his friends know this. Whenever Competitor A is asked to pick a number between one and ten, he picks six. Competitor A asks his friends to guess the number he is thinking of between one and ten. The metagame shows that the number is likely six.
[edit] Examples of Metagaming
- There is a special set of moves in chess which allows a player to win in four moves. Competitor A has been watching Competitor B play chess, and the past five games in a row Competitor B has attempted to use this four-move win. When Competitor A sits down to play against Competitor B, Competitor A will be metagaming if he/she plays in a way that will easily thwart the four-move checkmate before Competitor B makes it obvious that this is what he/she is doing.
- Metagaming is often cyclical. Imagine there is a collectible card game which contains a card X that says "if your opponent controls card Y, he/she loses the game." Card X is very powerful, and so to avoid it most people have stopped playing card Y. These people are metagaming because they have changed their decisions in anticipation of people playing card X. Then, people notice that nobody is playing card Y so they take card X out of their decks, since it is worthless otherwise. This is metagaming again because they have changed their decisions in anticipation of their opponent's decisions. Then, people notice that everyone has stopped playing card X, and so they begin to play card Y again since it's safe. This, yet again, is metagaming. This cycle can continue indefinitely.
- Player A is trying to figure out the hidden move that Player B has made. A thinks that it may be Move X, which Move Y can counter. However, Player B may have thought of that and not played Move X. Then A realizes that maybe B wanted A to think that and has made Move X. It is an infinite regress, and A cannot predict the move without more information.
- In role-playing games, a player is metagaming when they use knowledge that is not available to their character in order to give them an advantage within the game.
