Metagaming

The term metagame arose in mathematics as a descriptor for set interaction that governs subset interaction in certain cases. The term passed to military use and then to politics to describe functions that are often considered outside consideration yet have come to influence a recently emergent issue. Hence, a military operation would be considered a game under these considerations, but the political ramifications may be telling on the war as a metagame. Just so, a political game would be intent and method, while metagame to the political effort might be systems that govern the political game, for good or ill.

Within actual entertainment games, the term metagame is used to describe either a game system layered over the game system, to increase enjoyable complexity, or a game system by which game rules are created, such as Nomen (the game). Nomen (the game) is a sophisticated and simple example of a metagame popular as a pastime among philosophers and mathematicians, but has also spread widely among other people as a recreative pastime option. Some card games and board games allow pre-stated and set rule changes depending on extraneous events, such as distinct states of weather, commercials on the television, or a combination of cards put into play; this is also an example of metagaming.

A recent slang definition of Metagaming, popular among computer and video game fans, is any tactic in a computer or video game that uses one or more features of that game that lie outside the intended gameplay use, or exploit errors in programming structures. If, for example, one took advantage of a bug in the game to gain some advantage, that would be metagaming. Deliberately getting your character killed in order that you can return to your last saved game would also be metagaming. This is not metagaming in the proper sense, but a covertive slang term for cheating.