Meta gaming isn’t the same thing as cheating (or exploiting a rules grey area). It’s not gaming the system vs playing it honestly. As far as I understand, the

Meta gaming isn’t the same thing as cheating (or exploiting a rules grey area). It’s not gaming the system vs playing it honestly. As far as I understand, the metagame is understanding how the rules reward certain strategies and over others, and how those strategies interact with each other. The reason the idea has so much currency in video games is that rules are constantly evolving as the game is updated and patched. So like for gerrymandering, the metagame aspect is understanding that under the current rules, gerrymandering is a winning strategy. Actually executing that strategy and gerrymandering a district is the playing the game-game part, not the meta-game.