First time I ever understood what "the meta" refers to. Though I've definitely participated in the metagame without realizing it before.
Same goes for most of the examples he gives.
Looks like I'm getting old, and the word has been redefined from out under me:
In video games, however, the metagame has its own meaning—and depending on which game you play, the context differs. In short, the metagame in video gaming means using characters or items that are the most powerful at the time to try and find the best and quickest means to victory.
https://dotesports.com/general/news/what-is-the-meta-meaning...
Choice of strategy can be "meta", though. It depends on the context. For example in ultimate frisbee the current meta is to play Vertical offense, and so you see a lot of teams training for how to run it and how to defend against it.
Back in 2004 ish, the dominant teams played Horizontal offense, and we only saw Vert for set plays after a foul or other play stoppage.
The meta has changed because the dominant strategies have changed.
Then you can get even more meta, because perhaps your team is playing "long ball" and you know that if you start calling lots of travels, the other team will reciprocate. And you know that because even a contested travel causes a return to the thrower, it will hurt you more than hurting them.
All of that is both strategy and meta.
No big deal - words change. I’ll get used to it.
E.g. saying "foo is meta right now" means most players consider foo to be stronger than the alternatives, and if a player uses a strategy other than foo one might say they were playing off-meta, etc. But the term is wholly distinct from strategy itself.
Here's a concrete example:
Soccer fundamentals: passing, dribbling, etc.
Soccer strategies: formation, player roles, etc.
Soccer meta: viable formations, player roles, etc.
No one is out there playing a 8-2-1 formation because it's not a viable strategy, i.e. it's not part of the current meta. The current meta in soccer is largely 4-4-2 and 4-4-3.
3 in the back is relatively rare, because it's weak to the player roles that we currently see being employed by competitors. It's not part of the meta because it's a weak strategy against the currently common strategies in the meta.
High level strategy: wear down opponent, exploit endurance advantage
Low level strategy: aggressive midgame, long passes, high tempo, rotate attackers
Tactics: 4 4 2 formation, joe and Jean on wings, etc. force opponent mike to run side to side to wear out, then focus on scoring in final third of game.
Fundamentals: passing, communication, give and go, etc.
Meta: realizing that you can make more from your Instagram account than from playing the game.
Disclaimer: I don’t know anything about soccer (football)
If you'd like, you can think of "meta" as short for "meta-strategy", with the distinction between "meta-strategy" and "strategy" as similar to the distinction to "meta-physics" and "physics". People who claim that "meta-physics" is just "physics" would probably be regarded as "pedants".
Choosing to use a weapon at all is not meta. Choosing to not use a weapon to lure your opponent into trying to grab it while you wait to snipe them, is meta.
Think about rock-paper-scissor. The game is totally random. There is no in-game strategy that can do better. The only way to do better than half chance is to play meta and predict your opponent's strategy.
Say you have a game with various weapons. Each weapon has attack power, attack speed, and weight. If everything is balanced right, there could be no singular optimal weapon.
And let's say that the best considered weapons are all of a certain weight. They do the most damage in the least amount of time available.
Playing the metagame would be recognizing the game everyone is playing is using those weapons as best as possible. And then choosing the knife because it lets you run faster than everyone else. And your strategy becomes knifing people in the back and running away before they can fire back.
Then more people catch on to the knife strategy, because the best players are using it. Now most people are using knives and the game is all about maximizing run speed.
So you start using the pistol. It's a very slight hit to your run speed, but you can still fire back on anyone who knifes you in the back. You start just capping knifers left and right.
More people catch on. Pistols beat knives. As more people become pistol wielders, knifers get worse. The game is all about pistols now.
Until someone realizes that shotguns and rifles are only slightly slower than pistols, but do way more damage. Basically, everything of a certain weight is just good when facing a lot of pistols. So the game comes right back around to the start.
This is different from in-game strategy. In-game strategy would be planning routes and knowing how and when to cover. Meta is out-of-game strategy.
Like, investing in infrastructure, technology, etc is all war meta. It lets you approach the situation in ways your opponent isn't thinking about. You can make their strategies during the war irrelevant.
Another analogy is a bicycle race. You could have everyone run separately and compare their best times. But by racing together, you get peloton and team effects where players can attack opponentns and support teammates, but expose weakness that could be exploited, and the success of an act, like passing or drafting, depends on how others react.
I’ve found that over time, the dominant tactics in Splendor for my group swing between build and buy. People do whatever is necessary to win. Tactics used 50 games ago go away and then get brought back. People hold grudges against others over old games, and act to disrupt each other. All of this can be predicted and folded into game strategy.
I’ll admit, it’s a little difficult to see this type of meta in most gaming groups — my group happened to be my entire office, and we played Splendor every lunch break for probably a year. That’s hundreds of games within a small group of people.
Made me think, though. Thanks :)
Optimisation is a process that aims to find the best possible solution to a problem. E.g. let's use Dijkstra's algorithm to find the shortest path between two locations.
Meta-optimisation is finding the best possible process to do optimisation. E.g. let's use A* with a reasonable heuristic instead of Dijkstra's algorithm, because it'll be faster to run and give the same optimal result.
The meta-game here is that time-to-compute PLUS travel the path is the real thing that needs optimising - not just the path length.
I got the feeling reading this that the author is more familiar with the video game usage and worked backwards to give it some more substance.
in games though, I consider strategy to be something that arises more directly from the game mechanics and perhaps in response to your opponent over the course of a match, while meta comes from understanding the greater community ("meta" because the community exists outside of the game itself).
1) a higher level of abstraction. For example, creating a class is programming. Creating a class factory (a class that creates classes) is meta programming.
2) self referential. The movie Adaption is meta, because it is about itself.