Meta-games

Playfully Changing the Prevailing Climate of Opinion: Climate change as focal metaphor of effective global governance (Part #12)

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Beyond the mathematics of game theory, meta-game theory is an even more rarefied mathematical preoccupation. In a classic study, Nigel Howard (Paradoxes of Rationality: Games, Metagames, and Political Behavior. 1971) aimed to produce a technique that could be used to resolve real-life, real-time conflict situations and to investigate political and social interactions between decision makers. He includes an analysis of the Vietnam conflict. Elements of this perspective are to be found in another classic study of Vietnam by Scott Boorman (The Protracted Game: A Wei-ch'i Interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy, 1969).

As noted by Chris Langan (Levels of Rationality: Metagames and Mega. Noesis: the journal of the Mega Society, 1997), in arguments of relevance to strategies negligent of climate change:

Nevertheless, there are some major practical contexts to which the theory applies. Consider the Wallet Paradox itself. Like the Tragedy of the Commons, it centers on a "micro-economy" in which total wealth is limited; in light of this limitation, the theory of metagames generates higher-level information that reveals that the decision to play leads to a "false optimism". Such paradoxes describe other kinds of economy as well, including the global free market economy of the modern world. Even now, individuals, nations and international consortia are playing all kinds of "wallet games" with far-reaching implications for present and future generations of humanity. Unfortunately, the players often neither know nor care what long-term paradoxes might lurk within their strategies, ticking away like time bombs set to go off on the poor unborn souls who get stuck with the monetary and environmental tab.

Given the neglect of higher dimensionality, it is therefore extremely curious that "meta-games" and "meta-gaming" are a major preoccupation of designers and players of interactive internet and role playing games -- although "meta-play" is variously used to name an activity in its own right [more]. Meta-games may indeed be confused by some with "cheating" (see Queasy Games: exploring player-game interactions; Meta-Gaming: Definition ). According to Nathan Barnes (Dispelling Meta-Gaming Myths, 2002), "meta-gaming" means many different things to many different people. He endeavours to address the misconceptions about "pre-game alliances", "old boys clubs" or "CareBear Alliances", among groups of players. Emphases included:

• application to the psychological side of gaming. What players say to each other in the in-game chat is not part of playing the game as such, but it does effect how other players behave while playing, and therefore effects the outcome of playing, [more]
• meaning different things to different people, and more importantly, the line where it becomes odious or a problem is specific to the individual.
• using the knowledge that it is a game to make decisions.
• understood in terms of players producing new content for a game.
• the conversation that goes on around the game, becoming a form a multiplayer conspiracy theory game.
• the process of trying to force someone to behave in accordance with another's wishes by using threats of actions which will be taken/not taken outside the context of the current game.

Live Action Role-Play (LARP) is a form of role-play where the participants (termed players) take on fictive personalities (called roles or characters) and act out their interaction in a predefined, fictive setting. In a description of the game, Petter Bøckman (Dictionary In: As LARP Grows Up: The Book from Knudepunkt, 2003), such "meta-playing" by "larpers" is described as:

An expression covering a situation where a player is taking non-diegetic actions as a part of playing the role. [NB: diegesis is an expression from film theory, denoting the totality of the story and possible truths within it. In a larp that will translate to "all that is true to the roles"]. This may occur when two players need to sort out technicalities of game mechanics... or when play has broken down to such an extent that there is no longer is any point to playing in character.... However, meta-actions are always taken in the interest of the role, so that normal play may resume as soon as the situation is resolved. Meta-play is thus the direct opposite of meta-consideration, where the actions is diegetic, but the reasons are not.

Such insights could be usefuilly explored in relation to the political game-playing ("behind the scenes") relevant to climate change.

Jason Newquist explores such strategies (Meta-Gaming Strategies) and has a very helpful tabulation of them (Meta-Gaming Strategies: Categorization). There is much concern with how to constrain them (cf How To Minimize Meta-Gaming: GM Mastery, 2004):

Meta-gaming (the use of information possessed by the player for the gain of hisher character that the character couldn't have known) is a force that has managed to fray the temper of many a good GM and is responsible for the breakdown of many RPG campaigns. Harried GMs are always looking for ways to minimize the effect meta-gaming has on their games without the need for time consuming practises that destroy suspension of disbelief.

There would seem to be a degree of isomorphism with studies of multi-agent systems fundamental to emerging insights into agent technology. For Peter J. Braspenning (Plant-like, Animal-like and Humanoid Agents and corresponding Multi-Agent Systems, 1997):

We claim, that these notions are the most visible signs of a not yet clearly visible revolution in the ways in which modern intelligent software systems are going to be analysed and designed. We intend to direct attention to the shift in perspective which is fundamental for the description of a system as consisting of relatively autonomous agents. After discussing the different possible kinds of cognitive "