The word metagame - Page 8

On February 03 2012 22:21 forelmashi wrote:
What Inca did is metagame. If you double gas, fake shrine and cancel it, or something, that is merely a mind game, but what Inca did is something _outside_ the game, a game of the game.

On February 03 2012 22:33 5ukkub wrote:
From the dawn of all time (starcraft 1 release) to this moment, word "metagame" was used to describe current tredns in choosing an opening strategy, how to counter opponent's opening. It also describes current ways of choosing certain unit compositions, rate of expanding etc.
It's a set of rules that govern most players to play the game in this particular way, because they think it's currently the best way to play.

It's important to point out that metagame constantly shifts.
Metagame changes everytime when certain strategy/tactic is being discovered/perfected, so more players start to use it.
In order to counter the new strategy, other races need to figure out strategies that counter/defend it.
That's why we constantly see small fluctuations in win rates of each race as the time passes.

What is very curious though, Metagame can be different in the same time period.
For example between servers (NA, EU, KR). On one server, players tend to all-in more, on another we can observe fast expands almost all the time.

On February 03 2012 22:49 RedFury wrote:


THIS.

On February 03 2012 06:19 Chill wrote:
99% of the discussion: Metagame doesn't mean "the current state of strategy". You hear LoL players talking about "new meta" or "current meta". That's the wrong usage. That's just "current strategies", not "metagame".

On February 03 2012 23:28 NekoFlandre wrote:
Having played M:TG A long while ago. I remember when it was meta-game to main deck splinter vs tinker.

Then again, what you did in your deck to kill Masticore + Tinker + Metalworker.... and grim monoliths.

Or, when bargain first hit..... Hell I had a Spellbomb deck that beat most everything was hillarious and yes, that was metagame.

Currently? The term has changed for SC2 and it does somewhat fit by making a choice that is not the normal of play which is what metagame to me means. anyway.

On February 03 2012 13:04 HardlyNever wrote:


How can it be controlled "pretty well?" Who is doing the controlling? Do you honestly believe this thread or even the TL community will change the way casters/players use the term "metagame?"

On February 04 2012 00:09 Liquid`Tyler wrote:

By controlling pretty well I mean that the correct and most useful definition of a term stays consistent. I don't believe that the TL community will change anything because the TL community already has changed it. Casters and players have been using the term well for years due to efforts by the TL community.

On February 03 2012 04:14 iamke55 wrote:
Yeah it's really annoying when people use "metagame" when they mean to say "mindgame". No, you didn't metagame your opponent no matter how smart you think you sound when you say that. You predicted him. Or mindgamed him.

I think to say the "probabilistic distribution of strategies" is a little too specific though. In the SC community we don't have access to probability distributions like in Magic or other cardgames where you can map out the metagame with specific percentages for each deck type, but we can still do it by feel. I don't think anyone has stats about how often 2 rax is used instead of reactor hellions in TvZ, for example, but it's obvious that reactor hellions have become a bigger part of the metagame over time. On Smogon we use probabilistic distributions within each of the different metagames played, so the latter term is clearly quite different.


I'd replace the "please do so politely" with a "don't post at all".

On February 03 2012 19:42 derfuhrer wrote:
A friend who frequents this website directed me to this thread, since it's active and we recently argued about the term metagame when he used the word in a text message, and I screamed at him for uttering nonsense. The subject, and the game in question, are both interesting to me, and I thought I might take this opportunity to set the record straight once and for all.

I will preface this by saying that I am more educated on this subject than every single person on this forum. I will treat the subject from every angle I can think of. Bear with me, because these concepts will by the end of this post become quite relevant to StarCraft -- far more than anything that's been said so far.

Yes, "meta" does mean outside/beyond/above/etc., even though in Greek it means adjacent. This is because when Aristotle wrote Metaphysics, it was so named because it came right after Physics, and was therefore adjacent. But the subject matter was (mis)understood to be "above" or "beyond" physics, so the prefix evolved to mean beyond/outside. And now it DOES mean that, as far as anyone needs to be concerned, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. This is English now, not Greek anymore, and we have our own relationships between words unique to our language.

It was brought up in this thread that the sounds that make up words do not have intrinsic meaning but are merely signifiers. This is technically correct, but in practice you are employing this principle to reach a false conclusion. Words in practice DO have intrinsic meaning because they do in our minds. The word red in our minds will always be tied to the image, and when enough of these images are related to sounds, we are able to write dictionaries where words actually do mean something. So our experiences CREATE intrinsic meaning in words (not in the strict logical sense, but psychologically)... and then, those words in turn create new experiences in our minds. I'll get to that later.

And now I will have to completely change direction and attack the nature of a game. The word "game" is undefined (philosophically), but what's known is that games have rules, and rules by definition cannot be broken. Laws, in contrast, can. You might be thinking, "What about the laws of the universe?!" The word "laws" belongs in the context of humanity. You can break the law -- by stealing, etc. The universe is a Game (the only game), and physics is an approximation and an abstraction of the rules of that game. Those rules cannot be broken because they follow as absolute necessities from cause and effect -- that is a deep philosophical subject, however, and one that you will just have to trust me on. Rules cannot be broken.

Further, it is impossible to draw a line and saw that this is where the rules of one game end and where the rules of another game begin. The reason, for example, that you can't travel faster than light in a videogame is because you can't travel faster than light in the universe (according to Einstein's theory, that is). BUT WHAT?! WHAT ABOUT GAMES WHERE YOU GO INTO HYPERSPACE? -- Those are just randomly colored pixels on a screen, moron. Images and words creating the illusion of hyperspace travel is not identical to hyperspace travel. Even if a computer simulation were developed with the intention of simulating faster-than-light travel, it would be impossible for that simulation to actually be able to simulate faster-than-light travel, because that would require... metaprogramming! It would only ever be able to simulate an illusion of faster-than-light travel. (Again, assuming Einstein was right.)

Now before we can reach the final point, we have to make a distinction between electronic games/board games/card games/etc. and games in real life. It is truly impossible to break a game's rules, no matter what kind of game it is. When you do "break" a game's rules, what's MEANT by this expression is that you started playing your own game. So if you break a "rule" in a tournament (a tournament is a real life game), in my language that would mean you broke a (human) law, which actually means that you stopped playing the game (the tournament) everyone else was playing and started playing your own version of the game (your own tournament with its own rules).

So a tournament, as such, being a game, consists of rules that can never, therefore, be laws, but in practice they are laws because people break them. If you remind someone before a match that you beat them last time (in order to mess with their head), is there some code that executes in the electronic game (or some rule that magically appears in the rulebook) to delete that comment and erase it from their memory? If not, then it is within the rules of the game because you were ABLE TO DO IT. Now you might have broken a tournament's rules (laws, because they're breakable), at which point you aren't playing their game anymore, since a game is defined as something with rules. Or you may have stopped playing some weird board game that forbids you from talking or whatever, and started playing your own version of the game that does permit you.

So now we come to StarCraft and its use of the word "metagame". This word essentially refers to a game's morality. Morality is a set of conventions, mores, TRENDS, etc. A game like Go is very simple in its ruleset (it's like 3-5 rules, depending on how you count them I guess), so it's assumed and expected that you're going to play mindgames in some way shape or form. It's assumed that you're going to know how people are playing the game today. It's assumed you're going to know contemporary joseki, and it would be surprising to a modern Go player if they saw you using some really old joseki. But it's all part of the game.

StarCraft, on the other hand, is a videogame and therefore is the product of thousands of years of art/game development. It has a shitload of rules. So psychological warfare and the like aren't immediately considered even as primary tactics, morally speaking. People who use the word "metagame" a lot are basically saying that there is a MINIGAME within StarCraft with its own rules (which, in practice are laws because this minigame is a social contract as it is in tournaments) and anyone who incorporates knowledge from outside that minigame is "metagaming". The problem with this is that it would be physically impossible for StarCraft to exist without bringing in externalities, because if you couldn't bring you and your experiences to the game you wouldn't be able to play it, and if you wouldn't be able to play it, it wouldn't exist. It would just be 1s and 0s on a disc.

In other words, by telling people that they are bringing their selves and their experiences into the "game", the "metagaming" people have turned the act of playing a game, such as StarCraft, Magic, etc., into a metagame by introducing their own games that exist within the electronic, board, or card games. There is simply no way a person can divorce their StarCraft life from everything else. The breakfast you ate on a particular morning will influence how well you play to some small degree, and knowledge of the trends will ALWAYS influence how you play whether you want it to or not. Even if you were to deliberately try avoiding acting on that knowledge, you would simply be acting on it anyway -- by avoiding it, because you might have done something else if you had remained completely ignorant.

By using this word "metagame" you (as well as MTG players, etc.), have allowed it TO INVADE YOUR PSYCHOLOGY (which is what words do), creating a fictional layer of morality (a minigame) within the unbreakable ruleset of StarCraft. The correct way to say "the metagame has changed a lot" is "the game has changed a lot" (if we're talking about patches) or otherwise "the strategies have shifted". It's fucking clear and simple, lol, no more dumb threads about it. And then, "she wanted to cheese him, so he metagamed her" is certainly not "she wanted to cheese him, so he 'PARADIGMED' her" or whatever lolol. You say "he gamed her", meaning he fully exploited the game's possibility-space to win using all the means at his disposal, including his brain without which he wouldn't be playing at all. Duh. Problem solved, everyone can be happy now except losers who fear change.

On February 04 2012 08:39 TrickyGilligan wrote:
So I'll admit I didn't read through every post on this thread, but I was wondering if this example would conform to most people's definition of the word:

Current strategies are not the metagame, they are simply current popular strategies.

Using your knowledge of current strategies (knowledge that extends past the current game you're in) to gain an in-game advantage without any actual in-game knowledge (ie scouting) would be considered metagaming.

Does this look right to people? It's about the use of the outside knowledge you have, rather than the actual knowledge itself.

On February 04 2012 08:39 TrickyGilligan wrote:
So I'll admit I didn't read through every post on this thread, but I was wondering if this example would conform to most people's definition of the word:

Current strategies are not the metagame, they are simply current popular strategies.

Using your knowledge of current strategies (knowledge that extends past the current game you're in) to gain an in-game advantage without any actual in-game knowledge (ie scouting) would be considered metagaming.

Does this look right to people? It's about the use of the outside knowledge you have, rather than the actual knowledge itself.

On February 03 2012 11:33 itsjustatank wrote:
Speak for yourself. In my case, I'd rather people communicate effectively and correctly moving forward. I do not believe that our language is inevitability doomed to 'degradation and dithering,' and everything I have said in this thread is in an attempt to prevent that from happening.
.

On February 04 2012 00:09 Liquid`Tyler wrote:

By controlling pretty well I mean that the correct and most useful definition of a term stays consistent. I don't believe that the TL community will change anything because the TL community already has changed it. Casters and players have been using the term well for years due to efforts by the TL community.