>>50834756It's not a competitive term, it's a game design term
"game state" is an easier concept to both explain and quantify in chess, so I'll use chess as an example
Picrel is a game state, specifically it's the starting state.
If I move a pawn forward one tile, that is a separate, unique game state.
If my opponent moves one of their pawns, that would also result in a unique game state.
For every decision we make, we change the state of the game.
So, the number of unique game states is the amount of piece placements that is possible within the rules of the game.
In a basic sense, the number of possible game states is a numeric measure of a game's complexity.
There's a lot more to defining depth and complexity than that, but in some cases it's all you really need to make an argument. Chess has more distinct game states than Checkers, so Chess is the more complex game.
Because changes in game state are largely proportional to the amount of decisions that are possible for the players to make, Wolfey did some math to find out how many combinations of decisions are possible on each turn.
Now due to RNG, there's technically far more game states that are possible after each turn of a pokemon match, but the goal here is only to get a general idea for how many outcomes the players have to account for, and in doubles that's exponentially more for the simple fact that you are making more decisions per-turn than you are in singles.
Sorry if this is too wordy, the short answer is "game states are the states the game can be put in as a result of player decisions"
