I think that’s only part of it. Take a game like any monster catching one. There is going to be a meta, a “tier list” that tells you that these monsters are the best of the best. And that’s fine. But the problem is when the game is poorly balanced so if you don’t play the meta, you can’t complete the game.
If I can’t beat the game using what I like, the game is just telling me that I shouldn’t play it.
I think that’s only part of it. Take a game like any monster catching one. There is going to be a meta, a “tier list” that tells you that these monsters are the best of the best. And that’s fine. But the problem is when the game is poorly balanced so if you don’t play the meta, you can’t complete the game. If I can’t beat the game using what I like, the game is just telling me that I shouldn’t play it.
This is true as well.
I just tried to give a bit further, linguistic type breakdown for watson in another comment.
Yeah its… kinda hard to nail down precisely how this term truly, fully works in English, at the moment.
Which itself is extremely meta, in a different sense of the word meta.
It’s the same sense of the word. In language terms, meta is self-referential. In gaming terms, the metagame is the game within the game.
Often, games turn into a rock-paper-scissors format where three different strategies fight for dominance to the exclusion of anything non-meta.