Talk:Metagame

Metagame =~ Environment
To be entirely fair, the term 'metagame' is still relatively new (as words go, not showing up in most dictionaries), and we could have a rousing argument about whether or not language should be prescriptive or descriptive, but it's certainly the case that (1) People use metagame to refer to both the environment as well as the outer game being played (sometimes out of some confusion, but some people know exactly what they are saying) and (2) Guildwik has generally chosen to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, when possible. At any rate, I don't want to even tempt an edit war, but I'll at least say on this talk page that at least one commonly used definition of metagame is the environment, even though most game theorists generally don't use the term that way (because they need to be more technical when using terms like environment). One possible edit could be simply to say that some people use the term environment to describe the current distribution of builds, while others use the term metagame to mean the same thing.

As a minor point of reference, Magic: The Gathering theorists often use both the term environment and metagame to refer to the environment. Given the influence that Magic had on GuildWars and the intentional similarities, I'd at least suggest we not call their language outright wrong.

OK, I'll stop rambling.

(All excellent edits, fwiw. I'm glad someone else attacked the article.) --JoDiamonds 11:58, 24 March 2006 (CST)