Playing the Meta Game

In many games, there is a term that gets around. That term is the one I wish to discuss in this post, and that is "meta". "Meta" is Greek for "after" or "beyond", but could also be taken to mean as "high". Thus the "meta game" can be understood as the highest abstraction of the game. This concept very much also applies to the Pokémon games, and in fact has been quite conceptualized in the main series. It's something that I and many players have to wrap our heads around every time we play.

For the Pokémon games, the meta game involves Pokémon and the strategies, techniques, et cetera that revolve around them. In the main series, this resolves to specific Pokémon and how their moves, stats, and so on are set to deal with adversaries. This even leads to another term, the "anti meta", which is designed to counter the meta game. With the changing of the VGC ruleset each year, different approaches come to manifest themselves according to the restrictions. Building a team entails knowing what approaches to use and which ones to expect.

Abstractions and therefore a meta game also appear to exist for other Pokémon games. I play Shuffle a lot, and the Competitive Stages have a large role to play in making a meta game transparent. Though I don't go up against someone directly, my performance is still compared among others who play the stages. Further, each time a new stage comes up, because the ranking and Pokémon usage is visible to every player, the competition practically distills to the best Pokémon that can do the job. This is effectively the meta game for that; the meta game for other stages are disclosed through other means.

Even in Go there seems to be a meta game. While the game still had only first-generation Pokémon, Dragonite was present in many Gyms as a powerful adversary. When the second-generation Pokémon entered, Tyranitar became a second one. It's hard not to expect Salamence to become a third one once its species family makes it in. As for the combatant side of things, my fellows have come up with a way with certain Pokémon to take care of some raids, even when many people can't take part. This too becomes the manifestation of a meta game.

As a fellow Pokémon colleague had said, the meta game is present in pretty much any game. Based on my experience, this seems to be quite the case even in Pokémon games; if things in a game can be coded into a highly systematic abstraction, then that is essentially the meta game. It has been done, and it certainly will happen again as the games are fleshed out further. It's safe to say that as players of Pokémon games, we'll have to continually be dealing with the meta game as something that transcends our games and play approaches.

One year ago: Cosplay: AsiA Cosplay Competition, Day 1