Beyond Metagames: Analyzing Metareference in Videogames

This extended abstract, presented at DiGRA 2025, argues that metareferential videogames have grown more frequent, visible, and radical, and that existing scholarship leaves significant theoretical gaps. Its authors propose a comprehensive analytical framework for metareference in videogames, one that accounts for the medium's ludic and digital specificity and extends beyond so-called "metagames," or games that foreground their own self-reflexivity. The motivation is partly a perceived crisis in the medium, where established aesthetic and representational conventions have become overused, and partly a broader cultural "permacrisis" of reference marked by eroding trust in images, truth, software, and data.

The framework rests on two dimensions: metareferential form and metareferential content. Form is divided into three layers: the gameworld, the game system (mechanics and interface), and elements reaching beyond the game, such as the operating system. Content is organized similarly, with comments directed at the gameworld's fictionality, the game system's rules and software, or aspects external to the game, including other games, the industry, and the wider media environment. The authors present this model as serving two purposes: systematically mapping metareference across diverse titles to identify similarities and differences, and offering a heuristic for close analysis of works that foreground self-reflexivity.

The proposed model is illustrated through strategies ranging from the remediation of nondigital aesthetic forms, to manufactured glitches and disruptions, to what the authors describe as "real" ontological metalepses that cross into the user's actual computing environment. The examples emphasize recent indie titles, which the authors treat as representative of broader trends across both independent and AAA development. The abstract is grounded in a substantial body of existing research on metareference, metagames, and digital fiction, and it previews a fuller book-length treatment of the topic.