What does it mean when a gamer refers to the metas of a game or the meta in a game?
In: Technology
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The “meta” game is the game within the game. Generally that’s what the term “meta” means.
For example, imagine tactic A was originally common and everyone played it because it’s highly effective by itself. So it becomes “the meta” because it’s what everyone tends to do because it’s legitimately. But then tactic B might be devised which counters tactic A, and suddenly loads of people just play that strategy and consistently win against people playing tactic A until suddenly THAT becomes most popular and becomes “the new meta”. And so on.
Then the game gets updated in some way that alters gameplay – one character gets an upgrade, another gets a downgrade. Suddenly tactic A is viable again, but tactic C is the new counter. It’s the meta game all over again.
For a more concrete example, Overwatch has (had?) a meta called “Dive” which basically meant players played a team of fast moving characters who could all pounce on a single target with the intention of killing them quickly as having the numbers advantage against your opponent is a very strong advantage. Over time this style moved in and out of favour as the game got updates and other strategies moved in and out of favour.
Or in baseball, the real game is to hit the ball and run around the bases, but the meta game is the hitter trying to guess what the pitcher will throw next and hit it while the pitcher tries to keep him guessing. With modern statistics pitchers’ styles can be quantified and “curve balls” and “sliders” etc are a thing which isn’t really part of the official rules but is what sorta tends to happen.
It refers to the current widely accepted “good” strategies of play. These sometimes change with patches or new gameplay techniques developed by those who play at the highest level.
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“Meta” isn’t an acronym.
“Meta” is stuff that is self-referential
I first came across it in computing – back when I learned about HTML at the start of the web in the early 90’s (but I found out it’s older than that – see Wikipedia entry at end of comment).
“Metadata” is “the data about data.” It was the information in the header of a web page (invisible to the user) but contained data about the specific web page.
Obviously, “most effective tactic available” doesn’t make sense in this instance – there are no “tactics” in web page information.
A meta game is “the game about the game.” It’s sort of the next level of strategy. Instead of the game statistics and the powers of different characters (say like in Dota), it’s the next left. If they pick Phantom Lancer, I’ll pick Earthshaker. It’s the game about the game, in that sense.
[Link to Wikipedia entry about metadata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata?wprov=sfti1)
OP: I think a lot of the divergence in answers you’re seeing here is a generational thing.
Meta, when used on somewhere like r/fortnitebr is used as the acronym. The crowd there is probably a fair bit younger on average than the folks here who are adamant it’s not an acronym and refers to the game about the game. This (the acronym) seems to be a relatively new evolution of the term, and it’s possible that it is derived from the word “meta” into a backronym, and you could argue that it’s related to the word meta, but chances are where you’re seeing it it isn’t being used that way.
In a lot of common usage it’s being used as, literally, “most effective tactic available”. Substitute in “most effective tactic available” and chances are the meaning of the post will be clear, substitute in the meaning of the word Meta and most of the time the sentence will be nonsensical.
My guess is the recent evolution came about as many popular online games have frequent updates that can radically change what tactics are most effective, so the acronym came into common use to describe very rapidly evolving gameplay.
In short, meta means whatever the community has as a whole defined the best or right way to play at the time.
A longer explanation: Meta means “of a higher level.” Let’s take Call of Duty for example. On the game level, and outside of the game developer’s intent, the game itself does not generally say, if you’re not playing in this X or Y or Z way, then you’re wrong.
But on a higher level, e.g. on a “meta” level, players have examined gun attributes, hiding places, vantage points, gadgets, etc., and have found what gets them wins. Over some period of time, the community accepts that this is the best way to play for a period of time. At least until someone “breaks the meta” by creating a counter to the current meta
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