Metagaming and You: Does being the best at the game make it more fun?

A question.

Requirements: Answers (Normal quality or higher).

The use of out-of-game information for in-game decisions.

Some people enjoy metagaming, usually it involves competitive or multiplayer playing, where using the knowledge you learned about the game to enhance your gaming experience to meet standards you are trying to meet or exceed/

Some people love having the best weapons, items, characters and strategies in-game to assure that they can beat whatever comes at them. When information and strategies are used with personal skill it assures victory or success within the game.

Sometimes though, when learning a lot about the game you are playing, and funneling into clean focused strategies, you begin to dislike or even hate how the game can be played, what thinks are involved in it, or who plays a certain style.

Learning more about the game than you "should" might take some enjoyment out of it, and turn you bitter and easily frustrated when playing. Sometimes you progress so quickly that the game is no longer fun or challenging and it's easily quittable afterwards.

And then there is encountering other metagamers, which can be a blessing or a frustratingly disgusting curse depending on which game group you play with.

Do you metagame at all? Which game? How does it make you feel? Would you like a cup of tea or a cracker?

Cup of tea, please.

I consider metagaming context-sensitive when it comes to enjoyment. In some circles, it's almost completely dominant — Starcraft jumps to mind. You can't have a multiplayer game of that without at least one participant knowing and considering some measure of the metagame.

On the other hand, particularly difficult single-player experiences can also have metagames that enhance it. Demons Souls had World Tendency and Character Tendency, which were reflections of your actions and choices. These could make the game easier or more difficult, depending on each Tendency. So having that external information informed how you might approach a particular section of the game, whether that be with efficient aggression or caution.

It and its sequel, Dark Souls, are also so sparse in their explanation of some game mechanics that metagaming becomes one way to make them reasonably possible. It's quite fun, and despite there being a metagame for Pv P, player-to-player battles are uncommon enough that most of it will deal with how you tackle the environment and how other players assist you, or the reverse.

I don't personally care about being awesome at games, but I do feel that a metagame can enhance them — as long as it's taken into account via game design. Accidental metagames are generally the result of poor balance in one or more respects, so if there's going to be a metagame, I'd want it to be placed there on purpose.

I do enjoy the part of metagaming that is necessary to overcome in-game challenges such as knowing how an AI behaves, when a boss is going to use a different attack or whether I'll need to enchant my weapons and armor in a certain way to survive a given encounter.

The part that I don't like is where it becomes a competition between players to be 'the best' in an area of the game, whether it's being unbeatable (in whatever sense) in 1v1 or team PVP or being the first or fastest to reach the level cap or kill the final boss. I go into a game looking for an experience and it's depressing that so many newer players go in specifically to dominate.

That's the kind of metagame that tends to break the entire game system- and when developers start optimizing for it, the game itself.

edited 9th Nov '11 12:27:03 AM by Recon5

I don't like metagaming at all. A game that requires metagaming (I never encountered one, though) is for me a failure. It's not that I'm against using information that doesn't come from the game itself. After all, if I know it, why shouldn't I use it? But I don't go out of my way to obtain such knowledge.

Depends on the situation really. In a multiplayer competition, metagaming is pretty much part of the game.

But I assume we are talking single player here. The way I see it: if you need a guide to figure out most basic stuff, something went wrong. Harvest Moon, for example, has a terrible habit involving the triggering of events. They only happen when you are at the right place at the right time, but the timeframe is often so small that many will never stumble across it if they aren't actively looking for it.

But if that basic requirement is fulfilled, then I'll happily burn anything that even looks like a guide during my first playthrough. Being surprised and getting your own brain juices flowing is so much more satisfying then simply 'winning' the game because someone has been holding your hand the entire time. On second playthrough, there will be guides to see all the cool stuff I missed (unless I just unlocked a higher difficulty. It's the challenge that matters.)

Some exceptions , though. Mostly stuff that requires lots of trail and error, like Golden Sun's class system, that you can figure out by yourself if you dedicate an hour to some experimentation, but that sort of boring work I'll leave to others. I got bosses to kill!

I've encountered a lot of old games that seemed to have been designed to be played with guide in hand. This was a clever, if irritating, Revenue Enhancing Device in the days before Gamefaqs, but nowadays, it's simply bad design—and modern games that attempt to mimic that style are badly designed as well, no matter how "retro" they're intended to be. (Of course, this mindset was pervasive enough that I'm still willing to put up with some guide-requiring games, so long as I can get the guide without paying extra money.)

I feel reminded of the Rumpelstiltzkin riddle in Kings Quest. For extra fun, try figuring that one out as a barely teen with just kinda decent, but limited, English skills, who also doesn't know Rumpelstilzchen's English name. Makes it even more impossible than it already is.

Dark Souls has been mentioned, and I think it's a game where the metagame is universally detrimental. The whole point to the game is figuring the mechanics and obstacles out for yourself... In fact, I had a roommate who thought he was clever by giving me "Subtle hints" as to what I should do next, as he had read most of the wiki despite never actually playing it. That was incredibly annoying. I wanted to piece together my own strategy from the scraps of information the game and other player's orange glowing messages gave me. Hell, i consider just about every entry on the game's trope page to be a spoiler.

So i don't have more fun by simply being better at a game. I have more fun by beating a game on my own terms.

On the other hand, other games need a metagame. Some players could play Street Fighter for days without realizing that a Shoryuken is great for anti-air. And everything else.

I never got involved with it myself, but EVE Online has metagaming fairly common for dealing with enemy corporations and pvp. Alternate characters to act as spies to gather information on enemy plans or locations, theft of resources, or even resulting in a corporation or entire alliance being disbanded.

Three different links about metagaming in EVE.

edited 9th Nov '11 5:18:46 AM by Maralinga

I think we might be arguing multiple things here. For instance, what exactly is "metagaming"? Is it usage of information gained from sources outside intended gameplay? Is it using information unavailable in intended gameplay? Is it using information about what other players do? Depending on how strictly you define metagaming, "restoring from save and trying again" could count as metagaming, since your knowledge carries over in play, but not in the game. I don't favor a definition that harsh, mind.

Anyway, I think metagaming is inevitable in competitive games; when your playing against another player, you *have* to play against the player as much as the game.