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Metagames, Paragames and Orthogames: A New
Vocabulary
Marcus Carter
Department of Computing and
Information Systems
The University of Melbourne
Melbourne, Australia
marcusc@unimelb.edu.au
Martin Gibbs
Department of Computing and
Information Systems
The University of Melbourne
Melbourne, Australia
martin.gibbs@unimelb.edu.au
Mitchell Harrop
Department of Computing and
Information Systems
The University of Melbourne
Melbourne, Australia
mharrop@unimelb.edu.au
ABSTRACT
The term ‘metagaming’ is widely used to describe a variety of
conceptually difficult activities associated with game play. This
wide use has lead to a conceptual overload of the term, mitigating
its potential use for game studies. This paper will suggest two new
terms to use, ‘orthogame and ‘paragame’, in conjunction with a
more clearly defined notion of ‘metagame’. We argue that these
new terms have the potential to be highly useful for defining and
understanding peripheral play activities common in modern
digital games. We apply this new vocabulary to a variety of play
practices in EVE Online to illustrate its strength for analysing and
defining play practices.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
K.8.0 [Personal Computing]: General – Games.
General Terms
Languages, Theory.
Keywords
Metagaming, Metagame, Paragame, Orthogame, EVE Online,
Starcraft, Magic: The Gathering, Magic Circle.
1. INTRODUCTION
The term 'metagame' is frequently used by players, game designers
and academics to describe a wide variety of play activities
perceived by players as being 'outside' or 'peripheral' to the game,
while still being important to the overall game experience. This
paper reviews the emic usage of the term 'metagame', identifying
three categories of popular use; as higher strategy (such as the
Starcraft metagame), as 'peripheral' considerations (such as
'metagaming' in role-play games) and as additional content (the
'achievement metagame'). We understand the emic usage of
metagame as being a tool that players use to conceptualise
distinctions between game and non-game activities, as well as
more-game and less-game activities, which is worthy of serious
analysis. We illustrate that there is a broad, conceptually muddled
use of the term that encompasses a wide variety of different play
types and styles for which a single term is not useful. On the basis
of this review, we argue for two new terms, orthogame and
paragame, which provide a new way to define and understand the
boundaries that players create when playing, negotiating and
constructing game spaces.
This expansion of game studies vocabulary provides a clearer lens
for classifying play activities in the context of their relationship to
a socially negotiated, imagined notion of 'the game' or ‘the core
game’. Furthermore, these definitions hint at a new perspective
for understanding the boundaries between game and non-game,
challenging (or contributing to) some of the positions involved in
the contemporary 'magic circle' debate in game studies [see 2, 5,
29, 30]. We illustrate the potential of these new terms by
applying them to several conceptually difficult play activities in
the Icelandic MMO EVE Online that challenge the idea of games
as separable, bounded play-grounds. We understand conceptually
difficult play activities as being those that are important to a
player's game experience but not strictly or easily understandable
as part of 'the game'. The purpose of this paper as a whole is to
further the conceptual understanding of game play activities that
are traditionally understood as being peripheral to the game, both
by players and researchers, in order to recognise them as central to
the game experience. As several other researchers have argued
(for a systematic review of current empirical research see [34]),
viewing these 'extra-game' activities as central to game play is
essential for understanding modern digital games.
2. METAGAME & METAGAMING: THE
EMIC USAGE
This review of the current emic usages of metagame is presented
as a thorough rather than definitive overview of the usage of the
term. Its purpose is to introduce the most common uses so that we
may identify and understand what players are currently using the
word 'metagame' to describe. We performed this review by first
examining the uses that we were aware of through earlier research
and our experience as gamers. We then examined the content on
crowd sourced definition sites such as Urban Dictionary and the
discussion pages on Wikipedia as an appropriate way to
understand the emic usage of the term. We then turned to a more
systematic process, searching for the term metagame (and
variations thereof; metagaming, meta-game etc) on several
academic data base searches, Google, specific games websites and
games discussion forums. We have also drawn upon interviews
from several other research projects into EVE Online, World of
Warcraft, fabrications in game play and Warhammer 40,000 from
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which we justify the importance of the term orthogame. Our
analysis found three overlapping categories for the metagame
term, which we will now discuss in turn; the higher strategy
metagame, metagaming in role-play games and the achievement
metagame.
2.1 METAGAME AS A HIGHER
STRATEGY
Urban Dictionary is an online dictionary of slang words where
users can submit definitions that are then given a thumbs 'up' or
'down' by members of the site's community. Definitions with a
high number of thumbs up can be understood as largely
representative of an emic understanding of the term, as the site
receives over 15 million unique impressions each month [14]. The
most popular definition for metagame defines it as "the highest
level of strategy in many complex games, metagame refers to any
aspect of strategy that involves thinking about what your
opponent is thinking you are thinking" [9]. This definition also
suggests that the metagame exists when "no single strategy is
dominant". This definition uses two examples, the card game
Texas Hold’em Poker and the real time strategy game Starcraft.
The usage in Starcraft is consistent with participant usage we
have encountered in previous studies. The usage of the term in
this sense is the most popular, and has been used since at least the
late 1970’s to describe adaptive strategies previously deployed by
Poker players to reduce risk [13].
The Texas Hold'em Poker metagame is the easiest to understand
for those unfamiliar with digital games. Poker strategy website,
The PokerBank, describes metagaming in Poker as when a player
"makes a play or decision that has been influenced by external
knowledge rather than based on fundamental strategy alone"
[33]. The 'fundamental strategy' in Poker considers the statistical
probabilities associated with the cards on the table, the cards in
the player's hands and the risk associated with betting in the
context of these statistics. In professional Poker, the ‘external
knowledge’ involved in the metagame is "the sum of everything
that you know about the other players, and everything they know
about you” [12]. Professional Poker player Matt Matros describes
how "meta considerations" change his play decisions based on
factors external to the hands and current bets [18]. For Matros, the
poker metagame is how he considers his image to other players,
the consideration of other player's habits and previous tactics and
the metagame considerations that the other players make during
the game. These aspects of competitive Texas Hold'em are also
known as 'table image' and 'table presence' and carry between
tournaments. In this usage, the metagame is the awareness of the
wider context of play, with whom you are playing, over what
stakes and how other players act.
The ‘Starcraft metagame’ is the most popular notion of
metagaming in the modern digital game context. This higher
strategy metagame is a complex interplay between the game
community and the game itself. Starcraft is a futuristic military
real time strategy game developed by Blizzard Entertainment in
1998, and the first in the series is one of the best-selling games of
all time. Starcraft is also the most successful e-Sport game. This
popularity has created professional Starcraft players who compete
for prizes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The game
allows players to battle against each other as one of three races
(Terran, Zerg and Protoss), each with their own unique strengths
and weaknesses. Players start each game with limited resources,
building a base and units with which they attack the enemy using
complex strategies made possible due to the large number of unit
types. There are many different maps which add extra elements to
this complexity. Because of the wide variety of strategies,
Starcraft players (both professional and amateur) deploy a
‘metagame’ to determine which strategy to play. Popular Starcraft
wiki, Liquipedia, describes the Starcraft metagame as having
three major branches;
1. Preparation done before a match to exploit current
trends in Starcraft.
2. Preparation done specifically to exploit an opponent's or
map's style of play.
3. Strategic decisions designed specifically to exploit a
player's reaction or weakened mental state in the future.
These are also known as 'mind games' or 'psychological
warfare'.
In our analysis of the Starcraft metagame, it is necessary to
understand the professional and social Starcraft differently to
anonymous online multiplayer matches as they play the game in
different contexts and with different goals, which change the role
and shape of the metagame. Both the professional metagame and
social LAN Starcraft games encompass all three branches, while
single instance, anonymous, amateur metagaming is generally
limited to the first two branches.
The professional Starcraft metagame is similar to the Poker
metagame; it is the consideration of other players' habits and
previous play styles in the strategy decision making process. In
this way it also links the individual instances of game play to one
another. Blizzard explicitly cater and design for the professional
metagame, so whilst many definitions describe the metagame as
being "outside the actual game" [11] it is problematic to consider
it as something that is not an inherent part of the game or what it
takes to play the game. It is a similar situation for the amateur
metagame. It is part of the online multiplayer in Starcraft for
amateur players to be aware of current metagame tactics so that
they can adjust their play strategy accordingly. These popular
tactics experience waves of popularity, for example in 2005 it was
commonplace for Terran players to quickly build two barracks as
a defensive structure, but due to changing Zerg and Protoss
tactics, that opening play is now uncommon. Other metagames
exploit unfavourable balance in the game mechanics which the
developer adjusts in frequent patches. While the professional
players have a role in creating and supporting different popular
tactics, understanding the Starcraft metagame is a social activity
for many amateur players who discuss play styles and metagaming
on forums and blogs. The sociality of this activity is an integral
part of what is called the Starcraft metagame.
Similar usage of metagame as a type of higher strategy also
appears in Magic: the Gathering (M:TG). Magic: The Gathering
is a strategy card game that involves constructing decks up to 120
cards to use in battle against another player with their own deck.
In M:TG, the metagame is “what everyone else is playing” [8],
the player’s consideration of the context of their game (i.e., what
cards other players might be using in their deck). The games
creator, Wizards of the Coast, uses the term metagame to refer to
this part of M:TG. This usage is very similar to how it is used in
Poker and Starcraft. Richard Garfield, the creator of M:TG,
defines a metagame differently, as “how a game interfaces with
life” [27] while at the same time describing behaviours similar to
those presented above. Within this definition, Garfield claims that
(in addition to predicting the play of other players) the time a
player spends planning his/her deck is also part of the metagame,
which is a process of exploring the thousands of combinations a
players' deck can have. Garfield’s concept of the metagame
encompasses the entire context of play.
Wikipedia provides a collaboratively produced definition which
can be used as an indicative source of the emic usages of the
metagame term. This has been achieved through reviewing
previous iterations of the page in addition to the discussions page.
Wikipedia defines a metagame with a wider scope; as a "strategy,
action or method used in a game that transcends a prescribed rule
set, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the
supposed limits of environment set by the game". This definition
allows for the use of the term to describe Starcraft and Poker
higher strategies (as strategy that goes beyond the supposed limit
of environment set by the game) but also the metagame
phenomenon in tournament gaming where it is used to refer to an
adaptation to a specific gaming environment, with M:TG and
tabletop war game Warhammer 40,000 provided as examples. It is
worth noting that on Wikipedia, metagame and metagaming are a
disambiguation. Whilst the metagame definition also entertains
the use of the term metagaming in role-playing games, a separate
page exists for metagaming in role-playing games.
2.2 METAGAMING AS BREAKING THE
FOURTH-WALL
The term has a very different usage in role-playing, but a common
element of describing something peripheral to a notion of ‘the
game’. In role-playing games, metagaming is when a player
breaks the fourth wall of the game immersion, an "action made by
a player's character which makes use of knowledge that the
character is not meant to be aware of” [19]. Gary Alan Fine [10]
provides many examples from table-top role playing games which
fall under this conception of metagame. For example, Fine [10,
p.188-194] discusses how players use their contextual knowledge
to create machineguns and flying-machines in a fantasy world that
is meant to reflect the technological capabilities of the European
medieval era.
Dungeons and Dragons is the most popular pen and paper role-
playing game, going through several editions since the 1970’s and
can be used to provide many key examples of the role-playing
usage of metagaming. Players create characters with various skills
and abilities and take turns making actions for which the results
are determined by the roll of dice and the decisions of a ‘Dungeon
Master’ (DM), a player tasked with inventing and describing the
game and game play to the players. In role-playing games such as
Dungeons and Dragons, players are often expected to remain in
character, attempting to explore and understand the world around
them by directing their character to perform actions which the DM
will explain the results. Many players believe the proper way to
play is to only make decisions as their character would; only
taking into account their character's knowledge of the situations.
For example, a player controlling an oafish Orc character can be
in a dilemma: their brutish character is likely to charge into battle
without hesitation or thought; but perhaps the player has noticed a
sly look on the DM’s face which indicates to them (based on their
past dealings with this particular DM) that there is probably a
hidden trap present. Does the player metagame by using "out-of-
character knowledge in an in-character situation?" [24], based
upon their previous encounters with this DM and their past
knowledge of the devilish grins the DM is known to make when
something particularly terrible is about to happen? Doing so is
generally considered to be against the rules or spirit of the game,
and an example of a failure to role-play ‘properly’ [20].
This usage of the term provides an interesting contrast with the
metagame of higher strategy discussed above. On the one hand,
there is certainly the metagame associated with what a player and
what a player’s character does or does not know in this example.
On the other hand, there is an element of higher strategy in taking
into account the past playing sessions with a particular DM.
However, players can't be understood as competing against the
DM in the same manner as in the competitive games explored in
the previous section. Fine analysed this relationship between the
DM as a 'facilitator' of a fantasy world and as someone who is
actively working against the players or is believed to be working
against the players some of the time. So while there is some clear
examples of metagaming (such as building machine guns in a
fantasy world), the negotiation of the metagame concept by
players is more complicated than rules and design of the game; it
has to be understood in the context of how and why players play.
This, along with the considerable overlap with the higher strategy
metagame, highlights the need for the clearer understanding this
paper attempts to achieve.
2.3 METAGAME AS SOMETHING EXTRA
The third distinct usage of the term that emerges in the emic usage
of metagame is described on Urban Dictionary as a
“subcomponent of modern games which increase gameplay
without actually adding gameplay” [22]. This concept of
metagaming is starkly different from the previous two notions as it
is being used by players to distinguish between activities that are
negotiated as legitimately considered to be part of the core game
playing experience. While it is being used to describe play
activities that are within a game, they are still external or beyond a
more refined notion of ‘the game’ in an idealised sense. Popular
usage of the term metagame in this way can be traced back to
announcements and reporting about a feature in Halo 3, the third
game in the hugely popular Halo trilogy developed by Bungie
Studios in the United States. This feature, called the ‘campaign
metagame’ by the developers [26] adds a social and competitive
twist on the play of the campaign by adding a formal system that
scores and ranks a players' performance in campaign missions.
Through this addition of content the Halo metagame adds
challenges beyond completing the game on its hardest difficulty,
therefore increasing the potential enjoyment from the game. The
developers describe campaign scoring as an “additional way to
experience Halo 3” but warn that it “detracts from the story and
mood we (Bungie) are trying to set over the course of the game” ,
as players are concentrating on getting points instead of the story
progression or environment design [28]. This way of defining
metagame describes the consideration of something peripheral,
but does not require a break in the ‘fourth wall’.
Similar to campaign scoring, achievements and achievement
hunting in games is also referred to as a metagame. In 2005
Microsoft made achievements a requirement for all new games on
their second generation gaming console, the Xbox 360. Since
then, in game achievements that link to a player profile are
supported by the Sony Playstation and on Steam, a digital
distribution client for PC titles. Achievements have "changed the
way many people play games"[15] by rewarding players with
'trophies' for completing actions within a game that are tied to an
account that players use across multiple games. These accounts
connect individual games to being part of a player’s ‘gamer
identity’, as your ‘score’ is presented openly as a symbol of your
skill or persistency as a gamer. Achievements are rewarded for a
wide variety of player accomplishments beyond simply finishing
levels or finishing the game storyline on a specific difficulty. As
well as providing replay ability to games, according to designer
Mike Ellis these metagames also make games within games, or
challenges within challenges. Ellis identifies the training mission
in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009), which uses a time trial
to help players choose their game difficulty. In this way, the
achievement metagame is also a tool for developers to guide and
encourage players through the intended game play. Others
challenge players to do something within the game faster, or in a
different way. Some are just for fun, for example "fall 30,000 feet"
in Valve's Portal (2007). These achievements provide a new way
to play the game, and allow you to detach from the original or
traditional objective and play the game with different goals. There
are a multitude of websites dedicated towards providing guides to
getting 100% of the achievements in a game.
Another example of a metagame as a subcomponent of a larger
title is the economy metagame in Assassins Creed: Brotherhood
(2010), known as ‘rebuilding Rome’. This metagame involves the
player “repairing and opening various commercial enterprises”
[25] in the games setting of ancient Rome. This metagame is
completed alongside the game's main storyline, and can be
completely ignored by a player if they wish without detaching
from their enjoyment of the core game. Rather than offering an
entirely new way to play the game (as players are still driven to
complete the storyline of the game), the Assassins Creed
metagame is essentially a mini-game within the game, a sideline
quest with no impact on the larger narrative pushing the game
play. Interestingly, this part of the game also has achievements
available; a metagame to the metagame.
The play acts that these definitions of metagame attempt to define
are important parts of the game for the players who participate in
them. For this reason alone, it is worth attempting to clarify the
term. As these uses typically refer to peripheral play acts they are
of particular interest to game studies researchers, who have had
difficulty conceptualizing these activities. The ability to readily
define and conceptualize these play acts and player boundaries
has the potential to be a useful tool in understanding and
conceptualizing game play. We will now introduce and develop a
new set of terms that help reconcile the term metagame. These
two new terms are built on the family of Greek prefixes from
which meta- originates. They are paragame and orthogame.
3. A NEW VOCABULARY: META PARA
ORTHO
The first of these new terms is orthogame, derived from the Greek
word orthós, for which the short definition is “straight, correct”.
Thus the term orthogame can be utilized to refer to what players
collectively consider to be the ‘right and correct game’. A
common theme in the emic usages of metagame was the emphasis
on there being a separable idea of ‘game’ outside of which
metagame activities occurred. While it is important to
conceptualize the peripheral game activities discussed earlier as
an integral part of the game, our review of the term metagame
indicates that there is still a subsection within the game, which is
constantly being negotiated, that players might identify as being
the core or the very basic game within the entire game. In both the
higher strategy notion of metagame and the role-play usage,
players use metagame to refer to play acts beyond, but referential
to this orthogame, while still accepting those play acts as part of
the game as a whole. With the demarcation of achievements and
additional content as a metagame, players imply a 'core' space
within the game with which peripheral play acts interact. We can
therefore use orthogame as a tool to describe and understand these
spaces.
Another positive feature of the term orthogame is that we
understand it in relation to the non-orthogame and the importance
we place on these non-orthogame practices. In effect,
compounding its use for understanding conceptually difficult
peripheral play activities. Take, for example, two notions of the
Starcraft orthogame. In one way, the Starcraft orthogame can be
understood as the single player campaign of Starcraft, as it is the
'core' idea of what Starcraft the game is. However, it would also
be appropriate to describe the Starcraft orthogame as including
anonymous online play where the player is not aware of popular
trends. In defining the Starcraft orthogame in such a manner, we
acknowledge the centrality of multiplayer modes to Starcraft, but
also recognize what it is to 'play Starcraft', an idea negotiated by
the players and designers. The orthogame concept has the
potential to be a useful term for players, developers and game
studies, especially regarding online games and MMOs, to define
and differentiate between negotiated boundaries between different
play acts within a game.
With this understanding of an orthogame, we can develop a
conceptually clearer understanding of metagame. Meta- refers to
things that are "beyond; of a higher kind; an abstraction or self-
referential". We argue that the term metagaming refers to play
acts that involve or consider resources that are ‘beyond’ the scope
or control of what players consider to be the orthogame. The
resources players utilize in these metagames are created and
influenced by the context of play. Players often participate in
metagames because it makes them more successful at the implicit
goals or symbols of advancement of the orthogame. Metagaming
can be viewed positively and incorporated into acceptable play
practices (such as the Starcraft metagame) or rejected as the
‘wrong’ way to play (as it sometimes is in Dungeons and
Dragons). The most popular emic usage of metagame was
regarding Starcraft, therefore it is suitable that our new definition
includes the Starcraft metagame. These play activities are beyond
the scope of the orthogame of Starcraft as they are the
consideration of resources beyond the orthogame of Starcraft.
Players participate in the Starcraft metagame because it makes
them more successful at the implicit goals of the Starcraft
orthogame; winning the 'match'. Metagaming as breaking the
'fourth wall', such as in role-play games, can also continue to be
understood as a metagame, as it is the influence of a player’s
context (as a player not a character) on the game.
Our third and final definition is derived from the Greek word
pará. It can be easily understood via the commonly used term
parallel. It describes things that are “beside, adjacent, and
analogous but distinct from”. Thus the term paragame refers to
that which is performed peripheral to, but alongside the
orthogame. We argue that the ‘paragame’ is distinct from the
metagame by being contingent on a player’s desires and
motivations rather than the context of play. We do concede,
however (as Jesper Juul has argued [24]), that a player’s desires
and motivations are also conditional on the wider context of play.
The purpose of this distinction is to include the ‘why’ question
into investigating and understanding play acts so that we might
better acknowledge the importance of these paragames. We
classify the emic metagame concept regarding additional content,
such as campaign scoring in Halo 3 and achievement hunting in
Xbox titles, as a paragame. This is because these activities create
structured games with motivations separate from the orthogame
experience, but still interact with the orthogame in a fundamental
way.
Paragame and metagame offer a clear conceptual understanding of
play acts in consideration of their contextual settings and player
motivations. Along with orthogame, this expanded vocabulary has
the potential to be highly useful for the study of digital games.
The following section will illustrate this by discussing several
conceptually difficult play activities in EVE Online, many of
which are common across the MMO genre.
4. USING METAGAMES, PARAGAMES
AND ORTHOGAMES TO UNDERSTAND
EVE ONLINE
We understand conceptually difficult play activities as being those
that are important to a player's game experience but not strictly or
easily understandable as part of 'the game'. These activities are
'difficult' as many of them arise out of the unique nature of
modern digital games, especially online multiplayer games. Many
games studies researchers have focused on understanding these
activities. For example play activities like, the market for 'virtual'
currency in real money [2], cheating and grief play [4, 36] and
online play communities [23].
The first of these 'conceptually difficult' play activities we will
classify using our new vocabulary is the participation in
formalized, persistent game communities, common in the
Massively Multiplayer Online Role Play Game genre (for example
Guilds in World of Warcraft). In EVE, these social groups are
called Corporations. One of our previous research projects
examined the role of these online communities in the experience
of EVE Online [1] where we performed quantitative researched
into a specific Corporation, Dreddit, which has over 2,000
members who identify with the website, www.reddit.com. This
research illustrated that Dreddit is central to the experience of
EVE Online for its members. This conclusion is supported by
many other research projects into online communities in MMOs
[see 6, 7, 35]. Several interviews were conducted as part of this
research project, and in one interview a player defined their
membership in the group as 'metagaming', referencing its
importance as a central yet peripheral aspect of EVE; (in response
to 'Please describe why you continue to play EVE Online?', they
responded;) "the metagaming, I barely actually play EVE
anymore, but I love the people I communicate with and I
thoroughly enjoy the politics involved."
As T. L. Taylor has previously discussed [31, 32], 'traditional'
conceptualizations of game spaces often view participation in
these communities as a type of 'extra-game' activity which fails to
fully appreciate their importance to game play. One of the reasons
for this secondary approach to Corporation-like groups is that
much of this participation is done external to the game client; on
forums, text chat, voice chat and even within other games. As Vili
Lehdonvirta noted, participation in EVE Corporations “can be a
very complex and involved activity, giving rise to sub-activities,
organizations and even new technologies” [17]. If we examine the
nature of this activity, it becomes clear that it can be understood
as a paragame.
Membership of Corporation in EVE is not a requirement to the
core experience of the game; many players enjoy the virtual world
and rich fictional background of EVE without participating in the
multiplayer game play that Corporations provide. When a player
participates in the game as a member of a Corporation, for
example being involved in Corporation related PvP, their
experience of the orthogame is changed by providing new
resources for players to construct meaning, rules, desires and
goals in their experience and expectation of what the orthogame
is. These resources are not made available to the user through the
‘time and space’ context of play as such, but through player’s
participation in the community, opening up the possibilities of
new driving forces for play. The paragame permits players to
renegotiate concepts of success and advancement for the player
from being based in personal goals or the fictional narrative of the
game to being rooted in Corporation goals and community
achievements.
Through our examination of EVE Online Corporations and
players we observed several unique play activities that were
conducted through the 'Corporation paragame' that are difficult to
conceptualize without our new terms. The first of these revolves
around the activity of scamming in EVE Online. Scamming in
EVE, which would be considered cheating in a game like World of
Warcraft, is a form of grief play, where players deliberately
irritate, harass or ruin the play experience of others [36].
According to Check Yang Foo, for play to be considered griefing
it must; be an intentional act, cause other players to enjoy the
game less, and the griefer must enjoy the act [see also 4, p. 104].
EVE allows scamming, which has the effect of creating a "culture
of mistrust" [3] in social interactions between players.
A scam is when a player, abiding by the game mechanics, lies,
cheats or steals from another player. While this is a common
phenomenon in online games, EVE Online offers no recourse or
protection for victims, and no punishment for the offenders. In
this manner the developer can be seen as enabling, even
encouraging, scamming by legitimising it as part of the EVE
Online experience. Players are not allowed to use 'exploits', for
example a bug in the game, but if they can manipulate another
player into giving them misguided trust there are no possible
repercussions. There are many examples of player scams which
can encompass single play sessions or require months or years of
planning. The official EVE wiki states; "it will always be your
responsibility to prevent yourself from being taken advantage of,
and the tools you employ to that end are a level head, practicality
and a healthy distrust of strangers."
As a type of grief play, scamming in EVE Online can be described
as a paragame, as the meaning and purpose of these play activities
is constructed through player motivations found beyond what can
be experienced through the orthogame or is relevant to the context
of play. The manner in which the EVE Online developers
legitimise this practice (in contrast to other games) makes it
somewhat more difficult to define as something peripheral to the
core experience of EVE, but the demarcation of an orthogame
space allows for play like scamming to be separated from the
‘core’ game experience without reducing its importance.
A deeper look at griefing outside of EVE does make defining it as
a paragame somewhat problematic. The nature of griefing is
contingent and gains meaning from its context in the game. It is
frequently play constructed in reaction and in negotiation with the
‘hard coded’ programmed rules and the ‘soft coded’ social norms
of the game [21]. Paragames are games performed alongside the
orthogame, the convergence of player desires and motivations
with the architecture of the game. Metagames, however, are the
utilization of context based resources in the pursuit of the goals
and symbols of advancement implicit in the game architecture.
We argue that Grief play is a paragame because it redefines the
purpose of play through the desires of the ‘griefer', even though
those desires are born out of an astute awareness and rejection of
the context of play and the implicit symbols of success of the
orthogame.
To contextualise this distinction in other academic work, we can
classify the ‘WoW Glider’ mod, discussed by Mia Consalvo’s
research into cheating [5], as a metagame. 'Wow Glider' was an
add-on for World of Warcraft that levels up a player's character
without them having to play. According to Consalvo, the players
who use this mod do so for different reasons; to 'fast-forward' in
the game, to sell for (real) currency or to earn in-game money for
their 'main' character [5]. From a structuralist magic circle
perspective, these acts are understood simply as a "violation of the
rules" [5, p. 412] of the World of Warcraft magic circle. To define
and conceptualize them as such fails to understand or convey their
true nature as part of "the game as a contextual, meaning-making
process" [5, p. 413]. When the purpose of these activities are
linked to the achievement of in-game goals or symbols of
advancement (skill level or wealth), the use of the WoW Glider
mod can be defined and conceptualized as a metagame (especially
as the utilization of a mod to play the game implies an awareness
of the context of World of Warcraft play as a programmed game).
However, the act of running WoW Glider for the sole purpose of
gaining in-game wealth to sell for real currency should not be
considered a metagame as this is not an act of play, as it does not
interact with the orthogame experience; we therefore argue it
should be conceptualized as a non-game activity.
The third 'conceptually difficult' activity we identified in EVE
Online is the higher strategy involved in planning and organising
large scale fleet battles. Unique to EVE (and a draw card for many
players) is player versus player (PvP) fights which can involve
close to a thousand players simultaneously. One of the tactics we
noted Corporations using was scheduling battles at times that
would be inconvenient for their opponents, due to either 'down
time' (which happens for roughly 30 minutes every 24 hours) or
time zones (e.g., attacking a European alliance at 4am GMT).
'Fleet Commanders' also took into account the lag from such large
battles in their tactics (e.g., purposely overloading systems to
cause lag).
This activity is similar to the role-play emic metagame usage, as
considering things peripheral to the orthogame. It becomes
difficult to conceptualise these activities as part of the game when
viewing EVE Online as a separable virtual world, as these
activities illustrate a constant awareness of the context of play. We
defined the consideration of external resources as metagaming
when it involves the awareness of the context of play. As in the
example of the 'Wow Glider' mod, awareness of the game as a
structured, programmed environment is awareness of the context
of play, so actions such as timetabling battles to be interrupted by
downtime or purposefully overloading star systems are
metagaming. Similarly, timetabling battles at inconvenient times
for their opponents is a higher strategy metagame that utilizes
awareness of the characters in the game as having human-players
who are limited by geography.
5. CONCLUSION
We identified these EVE Online game activities as 'conceptually
difficult' because they are difficult to define and reconcile with
notions of the game as a separable, bounded space. In performing
these classifications, we have illustrated the usefulness of
conceptualization game play around a refined notion of the core
experience, based upon emic usage of the term metagame and our
experiences analyzing player interviews.
For what purpose? We can reasonably argue that clearer
definitions are always useful. But in addition to this, the
conceptual 'baggage' of the definitions we have given these terms
also suggests a new way of approaching games. Rather than
approaching game related phenomenon with a dichotomous
classification of 'game' or 'non-game', orthogame, paragame and
metagame suggest a 'more-game' and 'less-game' approach. This
conceptualization seeks to clarify various game related activities
in much the same way that the term paratext has been adopted
from media studies to conceptualize the various resources such as
cheat codes, walk-throughs and game reviews that shape and
influence game experiences and play performances [4]. Our
approach is supported by the emic usage of the term metagame,
which illustrated how players separate play activities as being
more-game and less-game, a conceptual leap in understanding
game spaces. The utilization of orthogame to refer to this
negotiated 'core' of a game has the potential to be highly useful for
game studies researchers when trying to understand the peripheral
game activities that are unique to modern digital games. By
accepting them as part of the game, we acknowledge their
importance to the game experience, but by identifying a 'core'
experience of the game we also recognise the importance of the
digital, virtual space that games occur within.
Metagame and paragame not only have the potential to be useful
for game studies researchers, but also for game designers. The
ability to define a phenomenon leads to a more in-depth
understanding of the nuanced differences between peripheral play
activities and their importance to the game experience. In
consequence, both researchers and designers will be better
situated to study, analyse and replicate metagames and paragames.
Further applications of the terms are necessary to fully flesh out
the definitions, but we believe that in their current format they
already have practical applications.
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