Unmasking Game ‘Meta’: Interpretation & Adherence

Quick Links

• What Is a Meta in Gaming?
• Are Metas Good or Bad for Gaming?
• Should You Follow the Meta in Games?

Key Takeaways

• Metas can help keep games fresh and introduce new play methods, benefiting from consistent updates and tweaks.
• A powerful meta can warp the game around it, putting players at a disadvantage if they don’t follow it.
• Whether or not you should follow the meta depends on your enjoyment and fulfillment within the game.

If you’ve ever played an online game, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of the term “meta.” Metas can make or break an online game, but it can be tricky to figure out what, exactly, a meta is. So, let’s explore what a meta is and whether you should follow it.

What Is a Meta in Gaming?

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Designing a multiplayer game is tricky. Ideally, the game should provide players with lots of options at their disposal, giving them ways to develop their own play styles.

At the same time, the developer needs to balance each playstyle so that everyone is on an even playing field and nobody has an innate advantage.

On paper, this sounds easy; in practice, not so much. During play, players will discover that a specific playstyle, item, or tactic will give them better results. As such, to maximize their success, the players begin basing their game plan around it.

For example, imagine there’s a player-versus-player (PVP) game where players can pick between Warrior, Wizard, and Rogue. The developers will ideally want each option to be of equal power, but if the players find that the Wizard is the most powerful and the Rogue is the weakest, more people will play Wizard and fewer will play Rogue.

This shift of behavior will become the game’s “meta.” This will stay true until the Wizard is “nerfed” (decreased in power) or the Rogue is “buffed” (increased in power) to stabilize the meta.

Metas aren’t just limited to games with inherently unequal dynamics like video games with different character classes. They can affect games where both sides are on equal standing. The game of chess gives both sides the same amount of pieces, yet there is still a meta surrounding the best openers and counter-openers. And a lot of apps that teach people chess will educate players on what these meta-based moves are. Metas are found in all manner of games, even dungeon masters have to be guard against player metagaming overpowering the fun of their Dungeons & Dragons sessions.

At this point, you might be curious where the term meta came from. People sometimes claim that “meta” is an acronym, standing for “most efficient tactic available.” There’s no evidence of that, though it is a clever example of a “backronym,” where people retroactively turn a word into an acronym. Instead, the term likely stemmed from the existing word “meta,” which means something that refers to itself. This is because the meta is essentially a game based on a game, where strategies and tactics are devised before a round even starts.

Are Metas Good or Bad for Gaming?

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You can’t define metas as a strictly good or bad thing in gaming. It wholly depends on how the meta develops, and how the developers handle it after it arises.

That’s one of the fascinating things about metas. The core game can remain and persist through both good and bad meta changes. Let’s look at how a meta can help or hurt a game.

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How Metas Can Help Games

Metas can sometimes be seen as “flavors of the month.” This is especially true for a game that receives consistent updates that tweak how the game is played. In this way, metas can help keep the game from going “stale” and introduce new play methods.

For example, the trading card game Magic the Gathering started its life as a physical card game, but it now has a digital client called “Magic the Gathering Arena” which is one of the best free PC games out there.

As an aside, there may be no finer example to use than Magic the Gathering on account of how its creator, game designer Richard Garfield, took the rarely used term “metagame” and injected it into the mainstream in the 1990s through his conversations about game design and the “meta” strategies found within the Magic the Gathering game system.

Magic the Gathering has the Standard format, where new batches of cards are introduced every six months, and cards become illegal to play in Standard after two years of their release unless it’s reprinted. This allows Standard to have a “rotating meta” where there’s a flow of new cards coming in and older cards falling out of Standard. Any particularly overpowered or annoying cards are banned.

The end result is a meta that shifts every six months, which keeps Magic the Gathering from getting boring and allows players to find new combos and playstyles with the new cards. And while Magic the Gathering has had its fair share of oppressive metas, they have either been banned or drifted out of Standard. It’s a great example of how a game can shed a bad meta, introduce a good one, and keep players happy and engaged.

How Metas Can Harm Games

Metas are not always positive. If a meta is too “powerful,” it will warp the game around it. In severe instances, players will be at an active disadvantage if they do not, or cannot follow what the meta dictates.

To stay on the topic of trading card games, Hearthstone is one of the best cross-platform mobile multiplayer games out there. Hearthstone had a period where its meta revolved around a card called “Dr. Boom,” which had great stats and a powerful effect. And given how Hearthstone is designed, any deck could run Dr. Boom.

The card was so good that people would add it as a “must-have” no matter what archetype their deck was. And people would concede if their opponent managed to play Dr. Boom and they hadn’t drawn it yet. Deck builders had to ask themselves if their deck could handle Dr. Boom; if it couldn’t, it was a bad deck.

Eventually, Dr. Boom got a nerf and the meta re-stabilised itself, but the card was forever deemed a meta-warper by Hearthstone players.

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Should You Follow the Meta in Games?

Because metas aren’t strictly good or bad, it’s important to know whether or not you should follow them.

Let’s look at why you might want to follow along, why you might want to ignore the meta, and how to do so selectively.

Following the Game Meta Can Enhance Your Enjoyment

If a meta is healthy and you enjoy playing in it, there’s nothing wrong with following it. After all, the meta developed because people found the best way to achieve something within the game.

In fact, you may enjoy following the meta and finding your own unique spin on it to fit your playstyle. Or you may even find an even better way to play. Both of which can feel very personally fulfilling.

You might be asking yourself, how can you “follow” something that is a sort of abstract game-upon-a-game layered over the existing game rules and structure you can see?

If you want to dig into the metas of the games you enjoy (or want to learn more about) a great place to start is gaming forums. Check if your game has a dedicated subreddit on reddit.com or elsewhere, like in forums on the developer’s website, Steam, or so on. Gaming blogs aren’t bad either, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find any publication as committed to the meta-analysis of a single game as that game’s subreddit.

That’s where you’ll find people actively discussing, debating, and often complaining about the meta of a given game. You’ll have plenty of reading material!

But Sometimes Following the Meta Kills the Fun

On the flip side, some people don’t like following the meta. They instead prefer to play as they desire, regardless of if it’s the best tactic in-game.

As such, if you find a game’s meta boring and have an awful time when you play it, it’s not worth getting invested in the game.

If you want a practical approach to testing whether you should follow the meta for a game, just dive right in first. If you’re having fun, keep playing. If you feel like you could have a lot of fun but you’re just not getting some key gameplay loop or mechanic, do a little light reading on game forums or game blogs to get a feel for it.

You might learn just enough to get the basic meta without feeling overwhelmed, or you might love it and dig in to learn everything you can about the current meta of the game. A graduated approach lets you get caught up in the meta only as much as you want.

Competitive or cooperative, many games have metas, however, and it can be difficult to fully avoid them. Whether or not you follow them depends on what you want from the game, and how healthy the meta is.

So you should never feel bad stepping back from a game when you realize that the game’s meta has tricked you into a grind or play style you don’t enjoy!