Although I agree that playing the meta game is important, I do still think that playing the meta game ~exclusively~ in certain contexts is just flat out corruption. Especially in business, politics.<p>With video games and sports, there is less at stake - but the example in the article with cable companies shows how, if all business played the meta game, every customer would have miserable service in that case.<p>In sports or video games, I can give examples of how it's annoying, and ruins the whole point of the game too:<p>1. Tennis:
If a tennis player takes long bathroom breaks when they sense their opponent is ahead (so that their opponent cools down, looses momentum and also gets frustrated), and also texts their coach to get advice while in there - knowing that nobody can confirm this.<p>This has nothing to do with the skill of the game. It annoys the crowd, it reduces opponent's in-game advantage, and potentially increases their strategic advantage illegitimately.<p>They aren't breaking the rules, but is that tennis? I don't think so<p>2. Mortal Kombat:
Back when I used to play against my brother, I would use a "cheap" move that when done in succession, it was almost impossible to defend against.<p>My brother would get upset, but I would keep using it until he stopped playing.<p>In this case, fine - the game is implemented this way so you can't argue against it. But in retrospect, this is just the game's poor design coming through, since the outcome is that the game is not entertaining to watch, doesn't require any skill (so it isn't fun for me), and is frustrating to the opponent, and hence not fun for anyone.<p>3. Diablo 2
I have a friend who, in university, was playing Diablo 2 in a lab. He found a cheat online that would allow him to farm XP (or gold or something - not familiar with the game). It was completely automated!<p>He was playing the meta game very well - he completely automated increasing the stats, but he wasn't playing at all. To this day, I have no idea why he did that :P<p>So I guess in conclusion - the rules of any cooperative game are designed to get some sort of outcome before receiving a reward. If the outcome can be circumvented, but you still get the reward, then the rules of the game are not well defined.<p>In terms of business and finance, playing the meta game too hard will corrupt the outcome.<p>However, since there will always be someone who exploits the lack of definition to the rules in specific cases, everyone needs to break the rules to compete. The only solution is perfectly defined rules - which don't seem to exist when the games are more complex.<p>So moot point lol