Define Metagame Meaning

The highest level of strategy in many complex games, metagame refers to any aspect of strategy that involves thinking about what your opponent is thinking you are thinking.

Metagame comes into play in any game where no single strategy is dominant and opposing sides are aware of multiple strategies that can succeed dependent upon opponents' actions. In order to perform at the highest level, it then becomes necessary to think about what your opponent thinks you will do (which may depend on what he thinks you think he thinks he will do, etc.) and to make decisions based on clues regarding what level they are thinking on.

This term is most commonly used to refer to poker and other complex card games, but is increasingly being used in relation to video games with complicated player vs player elements and even traditional sports.

Term used for card games. The act of changing your deck around to counter the majority of decks in the local tournament area.

A game within a game. Like Pazaak in Knights of the Old Republic. Or all video games within life.

When game information outside of what is available in a game is used to give a player an advantage in-game. Most commonly seen and frowned upon in many forms of role playing especially when consent has not been given.

The act of using outside or previously gained knowledge within a gaming universe for personal gain or advantage.

A common term used in Role-Playing game that tells real life details or something that goes beyond the limits or environment set by the game.
Often frowned apon in Role-Playing.

Metagaming is when someone playing a game is using perception involving content not included with the game, and using it to their advantage. It is also commonly used, and perhaps not correctly, for when someone has died in a game, remembers their last location, and uses that information to go back there and kill them vengefully.

Used often in the internet for online games, Roleplaying boards, and chatroom's. It is when a person reads what a character is doing, and thus assumes he knows everything what that character has done- without witnessing any of those events at all because A) his character was not there B)The action was in a different area of the rpg 'world' or C) the person is just a tool

Usually, metagamers are considered the elite gamers, who usually have been playing the game for the longest time period, and have the most skill and play the most competitively, the metagame is the environment that these competitive metagamers play in, in any given game, and the strategies used by those top competitive players.

The metagame is usually much more narrow then casual gaming, and there is often very little variation in strategy between metagamers because only the best are used.

Metagame often involves strategies found or created by players, not just simple tactics designed by the game developers to intentionally be part of the game, while also playing by the standards other metagamers believe to be commonplace.

Games such as mario bros or freeze tag usually lack a metagame, because the multiplayer aspect is limited, and/or there is little to no strategy or skill involved in the game, simple games in general usually lack or have a very small metagame, while more complex and competitive games usually have a larger metagame and a larger gap between strong and weak players.

Predicting an opponent's decision in competitive gaming as a result of analysis of the opponent's past decisions.