Metagame: Difference between revisions
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{{trope|wppage=Metagaming}}
{{quote|''Wizards loves to have variety and has made sure that for the last few seasons everything was viable. Except of course for when it was dominated by Jund, Fairies, Solar Flare, Affinity, Tog, Goblins, Rebels, Memory Jar, or Academy.''|toor314, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v{{=}}qvt14yucMxc&feature{{=}}related FAQ: Scars of Mirrodin]}}
The game outside the game. The '''Metagame''', a concept that exists for all competitive games, can't be easily defined in one sentence. Put simply, the Metagame is the collection of strategies in common use; how everyone else is playing. Using psychology-effort against your opponent while foiling their psychology-effort.
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It should probably be noted that the term "metagame" is also used pejoratively when it comes to [[Tabletop Games]] and other roleplaying games that expect players not to jump [[In and Out of Character]]. Here, using The '''Metagame''' is often considered somewhat akin to cheating, since it's information that the player's character couldn't possibly know (since the character [[Fourth Wall|doesn't know he's in a game]]), and shouldn't be making use of.
The [["Stop Having Fun!" Guys|"Stop Having Fun!" Guy]] attempts to enforce his own metagame on the other players.
This can also get very annoying to people who're new, coming across as a [[Guide Dang It]].
Not to be confused with [[
{{examples}}
* In the first episode of ''[[Sleuth 101]]''
* In one episode of ''[[Have I Got News for You]]'', Reginald D. Hunter was not only metagaming, but meta-metagaming, saying he should get ''points'' for fostering disharmony in the opposing team.▼
===
* The Metagame on ''[[The Amazing Race]]'' has evolved over time. Traces of it developing can be seen in Seasons 1-7, though the full metagame does not come into effect until Season 10. It had two major effects on the game, first, shifting it from a game dominated by young, fit teams (especially "alpha male" teams) and those with extensive travel experience, to a game dominated by intelligent teams. Second, it gave teams who would have had no shot on early seasons (like Ronald & Christina, who were weak at physical tasks) a legitimate chance to win.▼
** The courses themselves have evolved with the metagame, with the course designers lessening the occurrence of “place holder” tasks that no longer caused teams problems (like physical thrill tasks) and those that relied on luck (like the ever popular Needle in a Haystack tasks), and increased the number of tricks, and deceptive and vague clues that they threw at the racers. On Season 19, it became very apparent that the producers were well aware of the metagame, as they included several twists that were specifically designed to take advantage of the current metagame.▼
* ''[[The Mole (TV series)|The Mole]]'' has a pretty strong metagame, to go along with the challenges the team competes in (and the Mole tries to sabotage). Naturally, part of the metagame is to sabotage a little yourself, to make everyone else suspicious of you. But also important is tracking everyone else's suspects so that if someone gets booted, you can figure that whoever he/she was suspecting is probably innocent. Finally, gathering as much information as you can on the other players - even the ones you don't originally think is the Mole - will help you in case you do need to move to a new suspect.▼
* ''[[Survivor]]'' is all about this, as being able to continue playing and eventually win depends on how others vote, so a contestant's gameplay has to be tailored for the people he's playing with. Richard Hatch all but defined the metagame in the first season when he convinced his tribemates to coordinate their votes to target the opposing tribe; and alliances have been the top strategy ever since.▼
** Another common strategy is to keep a weaker player around as your sidekick; he's easy to win against in the finals. Recent seasons seem to take this to a larger scale, in that there seems to be an unspoken agreement not to vote out the [[Jerkass]] that nobody likes. True to metagaming principles, some players have made themselves look weak in order to get other players to simply not target them, and then try to pull a [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass]]. (Brett, Fabio, Ashley) Others even ''knew'' they weren't going to be good at challenges or would just get overshadowed by awesome, so they tried to up their weakness so they would assume they're nothing.▼
* History's [[Top Shot]] is starting to develop one, notably in Season 2 it came out that four contestants [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|decided at the beginning of the season who would win]] AND WERE RIGHT. While remaining totally within the rules.▼
** Oh, and Jake in Season three tries to DQ{{context|reason=What does Dairy Queen have to do with TV?}} a teammate he considers a long-term threat by {{spoiler|1=trying to provoke him into a fight, thus instantly DQing him.}}▼
* ''[[Big Brother]]'' US:▼
** First few weeks, nobody has any clear targets, but showing that you can win competitions or are obnoxious often gets you targeted. Hiding behind groups and not talking to anyone typically puts you at the bottom of the totem pole. Don't massively shift stuff or the whole house will come after you.▼
** Most recently, it's trying to become America's Favourite, especially if it's a showmance, because people who the viewers like seem to get [[Executive Meddling|lucky twists thrown their way]].▼
== Tabletop Games ==▼
* [[Chess]] has a metagame, evolved over [[Older Than Steam|eons]] of play. One might say that the metagame ''is'' the game.
** If you have ever played in any organizationally-sanctioned tournament, held anywhere at all, at some point in your life, it is guaranteed that every move you made was dutifully logged via algebraic notation, and then almost certainly dissected down to [[Serious Business|numbingly exhaustive detail]], so as to understand every available nuance of both how you played then, and potentially will now.
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** Professional RPS actually moves out of the Metagame realm and into the pure skill of trying to remain random (which is hard for humans to do). The first player to suffer a psychological breakdown after hours of RPS play and become predictable loses.
* There have been rumors of discovery of a board game with simple rules under the countless metagame layers of [[Diplomacy]], but it might just be the [[Acceptable Targets|French]] trying to double-cross us again.
** Diplomacy has a [https://web.archive.org/web/20131016152849/http://www.diplom.org/Zine/S2010M/ biannual zine]. which discusses the new strategies and ideas, amazingly still developing after 56 years. As often as not, an article or two in each issue is about ways to counter a strategy described in the previous issue.
* The Metagame of tic-tac-toe means that it is virtually unplayable for any two people with even casual experience of it (or, to put it another way, [[WarGames|the only winning move is not to play]]).
=== Card Games ===
▲== Card Games ==
* A combination of psychology and statistics go into the metagame behind [[Poker]], especially in the popular variation of Texas Hold 'Em. The film ''[[Casino Royale]]'' shows a lot of the strategy of reading your opponents and playing statistics, and playing your opponent based on your knowledge that they too known the psychology and statistics. There are hundreds of books on the market available that are all about the metagame behind poker.
** Interestingly, when fiction shows a bad poker player the common portrayal is someone who focuses too much on the Metagame, ignoring the actual game.
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*** Statistical analysis, also known as "pot odds" in poker circles, has in fact become a significant part of the poker metagame, and doesn't really differ all that much from the traditional metagame (since authors such as Doyle Brunson effectively gave the same advice under the cloak of experience rather than providing numbers).
* The entire point of Spades is the ability to accurately predict the number of books and bags each person at the table will take. You can win every single hand and still lose if your prediction was off. And winning any single trick is gonna be costly if you bid null—which happens because null, if made, is worth more than a positive number.
* The Metagame is critically important in the card game ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]''. Just walking in with a good deck won't do it; you need a deck that can handle the decks you expect other players to have. Dave Price famously won Pro Tour: Los Angeles based largely on a smart Metagame call—in a field where the overpowered Sligh deck ran rampant, Price included the obscure (and in most metagames, very bad) card [https://web.archive.org/web/20090417231538/http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?id=11303 Giant Strength] in his Sligh deck, which gave him an advantage both in the mirror match and against [[Hit Points|life-gaining]] decks which were the bane of the traditional, untuned Sligh deck.
** [http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/academy/19 This column] explains the basics of the M:TG metagame; the overall ideas apply for most metagames.
* Despite being criticized as simplistic by more "experienced" CCG players, the ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' card game has a metagame as well; taken too far, it leads to the "Toolbox" deck, a deck with no central theme but with every metagame-abusing card off the current Banned/Limited list. As with other card games, its metagame is susceptible to cookie-cutters and netdecking (a form of deck creation that pretty much mooches whatever the top decks in the last tournament were in an attempt to garner an easy win, the typical mindset that "if I use what the pros use, I'll play like the pros"). Also like the other games, it can be grossly mishandled by [[Executive Meddling]] or a lack of beta testing before releasing new cards (as with the notorious ''Invasion of Chaos'' Envoy monsters).
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* Even something as simple as ''[[Apples to Apples]]'' has a metagame. It's vital to know your opponents, what kind of sense of humor they have, and what kind of matches that they like in order to win.
=== Tabletop RPGs ===
▲== Live Action TV ==
▲* In the first episode of ''Sleuth 101''—an Australian comedy wherein a comedian enters a scripted whodunnit, and must improvise the role of detective and solve the mystery—guest detective Dave O'Neil utterly failed to piece together any of the clues presented in the story. Instead he broke completely out of character and began weighing the relative fame of the actors involved, finally choosing a culprit on the principal of [[Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize]]. He turned out to be correct.
▲* In one episode of ''[[Have I Got News for You]]'', Reginald D. Hunter was not only metagaming, but meta-metagaming, saying he should get ''points'' for fostering disharmony in the opposing team.
▲* The Metagame on ''[[The Amazing Race]]'' has evolved over time. Traces of it developing can be seen in Seasons 1-7, though the full metagame does not come into effect until Season 10. It had two major effects on the game, first, shifting it from a game dominated by young, fit teams (especially "alpha male" teams) and those with extensive travel experience, to a game dominated by intelligent teams. Second, it gave teams who would have had no shot on early seasons (like Ronald & Christina, who were weak at physical tasks) a legitimate chance to win.
▲** The courses themselves have evolved with the metagame, with the course designers lessening the occurrence of “place holder” tasks that no longer caused teams problems (like physical thrill tasks) and those that relied on luck (like the ever popular Needle in a Haystack tasks), and increased the number of tricks, and deceptive and vague clues that they threw at the racers. On Season 19, it became very apparent that the producers were well aware of the metagame, as they included several twists that were specifically designed to take advantage of the current metagame.
▲* ''[[The Mole (TV series)|The Mole]]'' has a pretty strong metagame, to go along with the challenges the team competes in (and the Mole tries to sabotage). Naturally, part of the metagame is to sabotage a little yourself, to make everyone else suspicious of you. But also important is tracking everyone else's suspects so that if someone gets booted, you can figure that whoever he/she was suspecting is probably innocent. Finally, gathering as much information as you can on the other players - even the ones you don't originally think is the Mole - will help you in case you do need to move to a new suspect.
▲* ''[[Survivor]]'' is all about this, as being able to continue playing and eventually win depends on how others vote, so a contestant's gameplay has to be tailored for the people he's playing with. Richard Hatch all but defined the metagame in the first season when he convinced his tribemates to coordinate their votes to target the opposing tribe; and alliances have been the top strategy ever since.
▲** Another common strategy is to keep a weaker player around as your sidekick; he's easy to win against in the finals. Recent seasons seem to take this to a larger scale, in that there seems to be an unspoken agreement not to vote out the [[Jerkass]] that nobody likes. True to metagaming principles, some players have made themselves look weak in order to get other players to simply not target them, and then try to pull a [[Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass]]. (Brett, Fabio, Ashley) Others even ''knew'' they weren't going to be good at challenges or would just get overshadowed by awesome, so they tried to up their weakness so they would assume they're nothing.
▲* History's [[Top Shot]] is starting to develop one, notably in Season 2 it came out that four contestants [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|decided at the beginning of the season who would win]] AND WERE RIGHT. While remaining totally within the rules.
▲** Oh, and Jake in Season three tries to DQ a teammate he considers a long-term threat by {{spoiler|1=trying to provoke him into a fight, thus instantly DQing him.}}
▲* ''[[Big Brother]]'' US:
▲** First few weeks, nobody has any clear targets, but showing that you can win competitions or are obnoxious often gets you targeted. Hiding behind groups and not talking to anyone typically puts you at the bottom of the totem pole. Don't massively shift stuff or the whole house will come after you.
▲** Most recently, it's trying to become America's Favourite, especially if it's a showmance, because people who the viewers like seem to get [[Executive Meddling|lucky twists thrown their way]].
== Sports ==▼
* A critical element to baseball is Pitcher/Batter psychology, as well as the game of chicken base runners play with the pitcher and catcher.▼
* The "offside trap" in Association Football, often seen at set pieces.▼
** On a wider level, the metagame can make entire formations lose effectiveness for long periods of time. The once-popular 3-5-2 formation, despite being effective against many standard formations such as a classic 4-4-2, is currently virtually non-existent in several of the most popular leagues; This is due to the modern metagame's preference for formations such as the 4-3-3, which would exploit the weaknesses of the 3-5-2 system.▼
* American football has this as well. The 2008 Miami Dolphins implemented an uncommon offensive formation: the "Wildcat" formation, in which the ball is directly snapped to the running back. This surprised most of their opponents, who had no idea how to defend against it, and as a result the Dolphins went from a league-worst 1-15 record to 11-5 and the AFC East title. Since then, however, opposing teams have devised effective countermeasures to the Wildcat offense - specifically by lining up the defensive tackles on the same side that the offense has put their extra blockers - and the Wildcat has since faded in popularity.▼
** The difference in meta-game between College and NFL football is one of the reasons why certain star college players flounder once they go pro: they are overwhelmed by the difference in both skill and strategy and get injured or make bad decisions.▼
** Same goes for coaches, too. After he retired from coaching for the University of Florida, Steve Spurrier tried to use his "Fun and Gun" offense (one that revolves around long passing plays) in the NFL and found out that most professional defensive linemen can out-think and out-run all but the best quarterbacks and wide receivers.▼
** Signal stealing—reading opponent's hand signals and such from coaches to players on the field and using their plans against them. Signal stealing became particularly controversial in the National Football League in 2007, when the New England Patriots lost a draft pick for stealing signals by video tape in the 2006.▼
* The LBW rule in cricket was introduced to stop a batsman defending his wicket with his leg, rather than his bat. Modern bowlers, particularly spin bowlers, often exploit the rule to get a batsman out LBW without him ever intending to get his leg in the way, and batting practice has responded similarly.▼
** In fact, many deliveries are not even pitched to hit the stumps in the modern game- the batsman gets out when he plays the ball badly, and if he leaves the ball he'll be safe. Compare to baseball, where a pitcher can and does intentionally deliver some balls outside of the strike zone.▼
* [[Mixed Martial Arts]] has this trope in spades. Most fighters have strengths depending on where the fight takes place, such as striking, in the clinch, takedowns and submission grappling. Their strategies and behavior will vary based on their opponents' strengths. A common example would be a powerful wrestler who is facing a pure striker will be aggressive and threaten with takedowns while on the feet. The striker will not commit as much to his strikes because he's always wary of a takedown. In this fashion, a wrestler can outstrike a striker without ever even using his wrestling.▼
** Adding to the metagame is the issue of marketability. Fighters are very conscious about the fact that casual fans enjoy brawls and knockouts much more easily than a methodical match won by careful grappling. It's why Chuck Liddell transformed himself into a knockout artist despite being a wrestler primarily (his excellent wrestling being part of the metagame in that it allowed him to commit fully to strikes with minimal worry about a takedown), and why fighters like brazilian jujitsu black belt Jorge Gurgel will choose to "stand and bang" rather than playing to their strengths.▼
▲== Tabletop Games ==
* Metagaming in [[Tabletop RPG]]s is frowned upon in most cames, such as not "inventing" gunpowder when playing a fantasy game or not simply killing the Grand Vizier even when you know the GM ''always'' makes the King's adviser turn traitor. On the other hand, sometimes it is expected or, at least, accepted. For instance, when playing a D&D wizard with a high score in the knowledge skills for magic and nature, you are probably allowed to look up the stats of a monster in the Monster Manual, while claiming that your character is remembering all those details from his studies.
* ''[[Paranoia (game)|Paranoia]]'' is a rather different game due to how much of it is metagame. There is usually a goal for your team of troubleshooters, as well as personal goals, affiliations, and mutations you as a player need to keep secret. Not to mention that, because the rulebook for the game is not something a character would have access to, it advises the GM not to let the players see inside it either. As a result rather than play the game and fullfill the group goal, backstabbing and playing the metagame to get your own win (or at least, make the other players lose faster) by manipulating the other players is important.
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* ''[[EVE Online]]'', from the [[PvP]] to the economy, has a metagame that would make a hardcore ''Starcraft'' gamer '''weep'''. Considering that what's on the line is often worth thousands of real-world dollars, and [http://eve.klaki.net/heist/ epic] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7905924.stm?lss heists] and scams are not only allowed, but one of the main selling points, this is to be expected. How [[Serious Business]] is it? The developers have hired a real-world economist to study the in-game economy, and there is at least one recorded instance of players ''causing a blackout'' in order to knock a rival player offline at a critical moment. While Blizzard and the various tournament sponsors attempt to keep the ''Starcraft'' metagame confined to game mechanics, CCP practically ''encourages'' social engineering between players.
** Backstabbing a friend in Eve can and has ended years long friendships... of course, some people have made said friends ''just'' so they can backstab them in Eve months or years later. Eve has kind of a scary metagame at times.
** A particularly good writeup about EVE's metagaming in practice detailing how [https://web.archive.org/web/20150426232134/http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1531749 HYDRA/Outbreak won the 2011 Alliance Tournament], including spying on the other odds-on favourites (especially the winner of the last three tournaments, Pandemic Legion) and successfully feeding intelligence to other teams in order to knock out Pandemic Legion's second team in the pre-qualifying round.
* One of the issues that "higher-level" ''[[Defense of the Ancients]]'' players in clans have with "pub" players, those that wander into spontaneous Battle.Net sessions, is that, while each player may have a certain theoretical knowledge of the strategies meant for each Hero, in practice these players rarely will coordinate to choose a lineup of Heroes that synergise well, lowering the effectiveness of the team. In addition, a certain amount of psychology and "mindgaming" is a tool that enables some players to outfight their enemies even when the odds are against them.
* The free MMORPG ''[[Urban Dead]]'' has a ''very'' extensive metagame, with the game's Wiki serving as its central hub. User-created barricade plans determine which buildings can be used as entry points and where dead survivors can be revived (among other things). Add in coordinated activities (such as raids) and intergroup diplomacy, and you have a level of depth that can keep you occupied for much longer than playing the actual game.
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*** And there was politics. Honest to god ''politics.'' The meta game was very very complicated, which was a big part of its decline and eventual demise.
* There's an amusing lampshade hung on this one by the indie game ''[[World of Goo]]''. The signs that pop up in every level with cryptic sayings also pop up in the free-play Corporation mode, where the player uses all of their collected goo-balls to build a massive tower. The game looks online and picks out other player's Corporation towers and floats the statistics of said tower on your screen as a small cloud. The sign's rather amusing message contains the phrase, "Everyone's building up. What's up there anyway? Some kind of metagame?"
* ''[[Street Fighter]] II'' and almost all 2D fighting games have only two things going in the screen at higher levels: Metagame and [[Combos]]. Combos are a "safe" way to inflict decent damage, but decent players don't let themselves open for them, so most matches consist on both players trying to find an opening and dealing damage while not giving themselves away and losing, and this is where most of the metagame is found. For example, in mid-to-high-level matches, when the two characters are looking for openings at a very close range it's called "footsies", and it's not weird to see someone lose because he threw a crouching medium kick at the wrong range and got punished in the few frames of recovery it has by a well timed crouching roundhouse. There are [https://web.archive.org/web/20140208074039/http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Glossary glossaries] full of words used every day in the fighting game community when discussing the metagame, and they all describe essential concepts. Most of the times, the basic strategy in 2D and 3D fighting games involves putting your opponent in a state of disadvantage (knockdown, frame disadvantage, plain fear of your pokes, etc) and use a "mixup", which your opponent will have to block/avoid correctly to avoid the damage and/or disadvantage it could inflict, but for example projectile characters can also take another approach and play a "keep-away" game, "chipping" their opponents to death while punishing their attempts to attack. There are thousands of different strategies (sometimes even more than one for each match-up), and thousands of counter-strategies, and all of them use ''metagame'' concepts like "zoning", "mindgames" and "pressure" to their fullest.
** There are [http://www.sirlin.net/ptw vast] [https://web.archive.org/web/20130115112253/http://shoryuken.com/forum/index.php?forums
* ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]'' has developed a fairly extensive metagame, with standard techniques known for the most-played characters. Former champion Ken is generally considered to have invented the majority of the Marth metagame. As a result, every knowledgeable Marth player these days is in some way inspired by Ken.
** The Metagame for ''Melee'' has risen to a ridiculous level that is still evolving nine years after the game came out. Every character has unique special moves with unique cancels which add a high element of unpredictability. For example, a Falco may approach an opponent using short-hopped lasers to quickly deliver stun and set up for an attack. However, many professionals are capable of frame-perfect shielding, which has led to use of the running powershield technique, which reflects the stun laser back at Falco and perfectly sets up an attack if performed correctly. A good Falco will play differently when confronted with a player capable of the running powershield.
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* During the early days of ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'', Spies (a class that can nearly perfectly mimic an enemy class) seemed way too powerful, to the point where teams basically relied on Spies to do anything useful. This lasted until people realized that Pyros could just use their flamethrowers on any person on their team; the ones who catch fire are Spies. Plus, the Spy will have just caught fire, which will hasten their demise. This practice, now known as Spychecking, is now widely used by most Pyro players, bringing the game back into relative class balance.
** The Spy also relies on the metagame to perform effectively. He has to: know how certain classes behave, recognize certain tactics, know various routes and blind spots on a map and generally play with the opponent's mind, much like a true spy.
** This trope is also a major factor in the [[Unpleasable Fanbase]]. Every time an update ships, somebody's bound to complain that the new items upset the existing meta-game, claiming that it gives one or more classes an unfair advantage/disadvantage. Sometimes they're right. (
* The online card game ''War Metal Tyrant'' has a fairly complex, balanced, and well-defined metagame (not that you'd know it from player opinion). The usual decks used are Tiatlapreds, Wall-stalls, Reaperspam, II rush, Pummeller/Bloodpool, and Xeno slowroll, all of which interact with each other in complex ways.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* The idea of the metagame is sent up in [
▲* The idea of the metagame is sent up in [http://www.partiallyclips.com/index.php?id=1442 this webcomic].
* And [http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2360.html this] ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' strip, in which the Nigerian Finance Minister confuses metagaming with Just Plain Cheating.
* ''[[Full Frontal Nerdity]]'' often revolves around the three [[Munchkin]] players metagaming all the DM's adventures into oblivion, [http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/ffn/index.php?date=2009-04-28 like this!]{{Dead link}}
* Julie tends to metagame sometimes in the D&D webcomic ''[[Our Little Adventure]]''. The comic itself has [[Hand Wave|handwaved this]] as one of Julie's bardic powers, but Rocky has [[Leaning on the Fourth Wall|warned her about it]] a couple of times.
* ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'' is an [[RPG Mechanics Verse]] rather than an actual game, but the characters are [[Medium Awareness|well aware of this fact]]. We have seen characters [[Genre Savvy|blatantly take advantage]] of things like there only being one [[Random Encounter]] per trip regardless of length (more would take up too much time), become the rivals of other characters so they can level up without doing any work (you will be the same level as your rival, so a fight between you is suitably dramatic), and acknowledge that being a human is best because somehow you will learn just as much magic in decades as an elf will in centuries (and if you start as another class and then multiclass into a wizard, you skip years of training because it is retroactively assumed you have been practicing all along).
== [[Web Original]] ==
* ''[[NationStates]]'' is an elaborate, multifaceted metagame that may or may not require you to have anything to do with the actual ''game'' it's attached to.
== [[Real Life]] ==
* Savvy military commanders sometimes metagame during wargames and similar exercises. They usually get a lot of flak from their superiors afterwards due to the prevailing belief that real engagements wouldn't have fixed enough rules to be exploited, though public opinion tends to be divided when word gets out.
* Participants in group simulations can metagame but as with the military example doing so may annoy the organizers as it may invalidate any data they are trying to gather.
▲=== Sports ===
▲* A critical element to baseball is Pitcher/Batter psychology, as well as the game of chicken base runners play with the pitcher and catcher.
▲* The "offside trap" in Association Football, often seen at set pieces.
▲** On a wider level, the metagame can make entire formations lose effectiveness for long periods of time. The once-popular 3-5-2 formation, despite being effective against many standard formations such as a classic 4-4-2, is currently virtually non-existent in several of the most popular leagues; This is due to the modern metagame's preference for formations such as the 4-3-3, which would exploit the weaknesses of the 3-5-2 system.
▲* American football has this as well. The 2008 Miami Dolphins implemented an uncommon offensive formation: the "Wildcat" formation, in which the ball is directly snapped to the running back. This surprised most of their opponents, who had no idea how to defend against it, and as a result the Dolphins went from a league-worst 1-15 record to 11-5 and the AFC East title. Since then, however, opposing teams have devised effective countermeasures to the Wildcat offense - specifically by lining up the defensive tackles on the same side that the offense has put their extra blockers - and the Wildcat has since faded in popularity.
▲** The difference in meta-game between College and NFL football is one of the reasons why certain star college players flounder once they go pro: they are overwhelmed by the difference in both skill and strategy and get injured or make bad decisions.
▲** Same goes for coaches, too. After he retired from coaching for the University of Florida, Steve Spurrier tried to use his "Fun and Gun" offense (one that revolves around long passing plays) in the NFL and found out that most professional defensive linemen can out-think and out-run all but the best quarterbacks and wide receivers.
▲** Signal stealing—reading opponent's hand signals and such from coaches to players on the field and using their plans against them. Signal stealing became particularly controversial in the National Football League in 2007, when the New England Patriots lost a draft pick for stealing signals by video tape in the 2006.
▲* The LBW rule in cricket was introduced to stop a batsman defending his wicket with his leg, rather than his bat. Modern bowlers, particularly spin bowlers, often exploit the rule to get a batsman out LBW without him ever intending to get his leg in the way, and batting practice has responded similarly.
▲** In fact, many deliveries are not even pitched to hit the stumps in the modern game- the batsman gets out when he plays the ball badly, and if he leaves the ball he'll be safe. Compare to baseball, where a pitcher can and does intentionally deliver some balls outside of the strike zone.
▲* [[Mixed Martial Arts]] has this trope in spades. Most fighters have strengths depending on where the fight takes place, such as striking, in the clinch, takedowns and submission grappling. Their strategies and behavior will vary based on their opponents' strengths. A common example would be a powerful wrestler who is facing a pure striker will be aggressive and threaten with takedowns while on the feet. The striker will not commit as much to his strikes because he's always wary of a takedown. In this fashion, a wrestler can outstrike a striker without ever even using his wrestling.
▲** Adding to the metagame is the issue of marketability. Fighters are very conscious about the fact that casual fans enjoy brawls and knockouts much more easily than a methodical match won by careful grappling. It's why Chuck Liddell transformed himself into a knockout artist despite being a wrestler primarily (his excellent wrestling being part of the metagame in that it allowed him to commit fully to strikes with minimal worry about a takedown), and why fighters like brazilian jujitsu black belt Jorge Gurgel will choose to "stand and bang" rather than playing to their strengths.
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