こんにちわ。You have clicked open this blog post to read it because you thought the title sounds like an interesting mind game, and you’re curious about what I can say about it. The truth is, I do have something to say: you’d think I should break into a separate paragraph now, because I am done with my introduction, but no, all I want to say is just in this simple process of me typing and you reading itself. This process is one in which I am forcefully interpreted and you are forcefully interpellated, one that you cannot revert unless you unlearn English. The set of blog-writing conventions (i.e., use English, talk about a game, analyze formal aspects of a game, and respond to in-class discussions) with which I am delivering my point to you are themselves the products of conditions of our being here and taking the class (i.e., a critical studies class about videogames that focuses on the practice of close-reading in an American school), and essential pieces for the construction of meaning on the basis of those conditions. Likewise, games utilize meaning-making devices and processes to deliver meaning in accordance with a set of rules and conventions already established in the tradition of game-meaning. As such, metagames are like meta blog posts: they deliver a point about game form–games’ meaning-making devices–to their players, in the process of gameplay. The Stanley Parable fits into this conception of metagames: the game uses narration to play on the idea of narrative, meanwhile constructing further reflections on the relationships between the narrative, the game, and the player, ultimately delivering a critical view of game: the player is dead upon entry into the game. I actually have a question to raise, rather than a point to make. If the essence of metagame is to be found in the process of gameplay itself, because it relies so much upon game form and meaning-making and delivers its critical view of games through them, why couldn’t it just be said that a metagame is just any game? If the metagame needs to invoke already established traditions and perceptions of game form in order to make its point about them, then are metagames “games about games,” or are they “games embedded in games”? Essentially, is there a universal, an absolute, in metagames, or are they always relational, always subject to pre-constructed and preconceived systems of knowledge? Or, given that metagames require a human consciousness engaging in the gameplay in order to construct its intended meaning, are metagemes really just about games? Could they, for instance, be about this blog post?
A Meta Blog Post about Metagames
