I have mixed feelings about meta-gaming.
Sometimes, it adds a lot to a game. Certain games would be downright boring if you strictly played by the rules. Poker comes to mind with the idea of “play the player, not the cards.” Other times, though, it can break a game. Mafia comes to mind here — I’m sure everyone who has played that game has anecdotes of outside factors unintentionally revealing things and spoiling a round. I guess it comes down to the pacing and atmosphere.
But from a competitive or design perspective, meta-gaming is necessary to fuel interest and progression. How do you design a game (and matchmaking for the game) to make it easy to pick up but impossible to set down? What makes a competitive game “fun”?
Sirlin’s (admitted “hardcore”) take on the issue is to create a hyper-accurate matchmaking system where you are matched as closely as possible to your skill-peers and end up with a roughly 50 – 50 win-loss record. He believes that the only statistic that matters is win-less record, and any other stats can be gamed and thus distort skill ratings, matchmaking results, and game outcome predictions. His ideal system would be similar to TrueSkill, which is based on Glicko, which in turn is based on Elo, the classic chess rating system.
An alternative system was created by Jeff Sagarin, who uses win margins to better predict future outcomes than the Elo system (and he applies it to college and professional sports quite successfully). In fact, there is currently a competition to create the best chess ranking/matchmaking/predictive system, and Elo is not doing very well. (The different teams’ methodologies are not released, so I couldn’t tell you if the current winners are using win-loss or points systems.)
Of course, like pointed out above, all stats can be gamed. Advantaged players can purposely handicap themselves. Disadvantaged players can try to force draws instead of risking losses. I remember when Son D would purposely surrender after absolutely crushing an opponent to purposely keep a 0-win record. (Even if I still do not understand his reasoning for doing so.)
Taking Validation Theory into consideration, a “slippery slope” game will teach you the most (assuming accurate post-mortem analysis) and give you the fastest skill progression. However, slippery slope games are intimidating to new and more casual players. I think the idea is to create a perpetual comeback game where in-game stats are considered and used to give a slight boost to players who are behind. However, a strictly accurate matchmaking should be used in between games. This way, players never feel that they are getting completely crushed, and they can incrementally grow by learning from people who are close to them in skill level.
Anyway, end of geeky gaming ramble. Here’s a cool video for you:
