Metagame

Metagame (Greek: μέτα = “about”, “beyond”), 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.

In Magic, "Metagame" commonly refers to the popularity of decks, and sometimes specific cards. Simply put: "what everyone else is playing." The practice of tuning a deck or adding sideboard cards in order to have a better chance to defeat the most popular decks is called metagaming. The term “metagame” is also used to describe the game around the game, including the organized play system, online resources, a library of material, and numerous communities.

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.

Examples of metagaming

• There is a special set of moves in chess, known as Scholar's Mate, which allows a player to win in four moves. Player A has been watching Player B play chess, and for the past five games in a row Player B has attempted to use this four-move win. When Player A sits down to play against Player B, Player 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. One example from Magic is the card Shatter, which says "destroy target artifact." Shatter is very powerful, and so to avoid it most people have stopped playing artifacts. These people are metagaming because they have changed their decisions in anticipation of people playing Shatter. Then, people notice that nobody is playing artifacts so they take Shatter out of their decks, since it is worthless without artifacts to target. This is another example of metagaming because the players have changed their decisions in anticipation of their opponent's decisions. Then, people notice that shatter has become uncommon, so they begin to play artifacts again. This, yet again, is metagaming. This cycle can continue indefinitely.