meta

In gaming, the meta is whatever strategy, character, weapon or build is currently the most effective, and therefore the most popular. If everyone in ranked is playing the same three heroes, those heroes are the meta.

What it means

The meta changes all the time. A balance patch nerfs one weapon and buffs another, players find a new combo, and within days the whole community has copied it. People talk about the meta “shifting,” about picks being “meta” or “off-meta,” and about building a team to “counter the meta.”

The idea has escaped gaming too. People talk about the meta for job applications, dating apps or fantasy football, meaning the approach that currently works best.

Examples

• “This patch completely changed the meta.”
• “Snipers are so meta right now it’s boring.”
• “I don’t care if it’s off-meta, I’m playing my main.”

Where it came from

“Meta” is short for metagame, a term from game theory in the 1950s and ’60s. Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering, helped popularize it in game design with a 1995 column, using it for the deck types that happened to be popular at a given time. Know Your Meme traces the wider spread to MOBA games like League of Legends in the early 2010s.

Does meta stand for “most effective tactics available”?

No. You’ll see that explanation all over forums, but it’s a backronym, a meaning invented after the word already existed. Dictionary.com calls it folk etymology.

Meta vs. metagaming

In tabletop role-playing games, “metagaming” means something else: using knowledge you have as a player but your character wouldn’t, like knowing a trap is coming because you read the module. And outside games, “meta” can mean self-referential, as in a movie about making movies.

Related terms

• nerf: to make something weaker
• buff: to make something stronger
• OP: overpowered
• sweaty: trying very hard, usually with meta picks
• cheese: winning with a cheap trick

See more terms like this in our gaming slang dictionary.