The Game industry is involved in the development, marketing, and monetization of video games. It encompasses dozens of job disciplines and employs thousands of people worldwide.
There are over 560 million online gamers around the world.
Gaming Vocabulary Words for Gamers
Following is a list of terms related to the world of gaming:
- Adds: This term refers to “additional enemies” that typically appear during boss encounters.
- AFK: AFK stands for “away from keyboard.” This means that a player is temporarily unavailable.
- AIMBOT: AIMBOT refers to the illegal software which grants perfect aim to the player using it.
- AOE: AOE, or “area of effect,” refers to attacks or abilities that affect a certain area. This contrasts with abilities that only hit one target, like a rifle.
- Bemoan: Regret strongly
- Best Selling: Selling in great numbers
- Bet On: Place a bet on
- Big Game: Large animals that are hunted for sport
- Biome: In Minecraft are regions within the game that display different characteristics, such as vegetation, temperature and resources.
- Bot: The gaming term Bot refers to a character that is controlled by the computer. In most games, bots are non-playable characters.
- Buff: In gaming slang, Buff is when a weapon or tool is rendered with good stats with the latest updates making it good for use.
- Bullet: A bullet sponge refers to an enemy that takes an excessive amount of damage to kill
- Bullet Sponge: Bullet sponge is another gaming slang pointed to a non-playable character who is hard to kill.
- Camping: In gaming, camping refers to the tactic where a player gains a strategically advantageous position by sitting in a particular position on the map.
- Chance On: Find unexpectedly
- Cheesing: In gaming, Cheesing is a strategy that requires minimal skill or knowledge from the players part to defeat an enemy.
- Churn: A vessel to separate butterfat from buttermilk
- Churn Out: Produce something at a fast rate
- Clans: In many team-based multiplayer games, clans are groups of players who play together.
- Clutch: Clutch is when a player outnumbered in a match takes down the opposing players one by one and wins the round.
- Cod: Major food fish of Arctic and cold-temperate waters
- Cooldown: This gaming term refers to the time in which the ability of a character recharges again for use.
- Crafting: Crafting refers to using materials gathered in a game (like plants or scrap metal) to make other useful items, like weapons or healing potions.
- Differentiator: A person who (or that which) differentiates
- DLC: DLC stands for downloadable content, and it can either be paid or free.
- DPS: DPS, which is short for “damage per second,” is a measurement for how much damage a particular weapon or attack outputs.
- Dried Up: Depleted of water
- DRM: DRM, which stands for “digital rights management,” refers to tools that manage copyright protection for games.
- Easter Egg: An easter egg is a hidden message; it could be in any form inside a game. It can be an image, a video, or even a hidden feature in the gameplay. Easter eggs are hard to find, but finding one is always worth it.
- Exploit: Spots on a map where someone can see through a wall, stand on a light post, or have some other unfair advantage.
- Expo: A collection of things for public display
- Far Cry: A disappointing disparity
- Feeding: These two terms aren’t identical, but they manifest similarly. Feeding is the act of being repeatedly killed by the enemy team, which obviously helps your opponent since your teammate is dead.
- Follow Suit: Do what someone else is doing
- Follow Up: A piece of work that exploits or builds on earlier work
- Fps: First Person Shooter – directly from the perspective of the soldier. (Doom, Battlefield)
- Frag: Classic term for killing and mostly tied to FPS games.
- Franchise: A statutory right or privilege granted by a government
- Game: An amusement or pastime
- Gaming: The act of playing for stakes in the hope of winning
- Ganking: Ganking is the act of a high-level or skilled player ganging up on someone else who has no chance of defending themselves.
- Gg: GG gaming slang means good game. Mostly used at the end of online multiplayer matches to let your teammates and opponents know that you had a good game and enjoyed playing with the lot.
- Glitch: A glitch, or bug, is an unintended issue in a game’s coding. Glitches could cause your character to get stuck in a wall, make enemies behave in strange ways, or even freeze the game entirely. Check out the best video game glitches for examples.
- Grinding: In gaming, Grinding is when a player does repetitive tasks to gain experience points or XP.
- Guillemot: Small black or brown speckled auks of northern seas
- Hacks: Surprisingly, this is usually called out when someone is killed. If you have a great internet connection and a fast video card, you will be called this on occasion.
- HITSCAN: HITSCAN refers to weapons, usually in first-person shooter games, that immediately hit what they’re aimed at when fired.
- HP: HP, which means health points or hit points, measures the vitality of your character
- HUD: HUD means heads up display; in gaming, HUD or the status bar shows a character’s health and other important information that helps with the gameplay.
- Innovate: Bring something new to an environment
- INSTALOCK: INSTALOCK is a gaming slang for multiplayer games meaning the process of instantly locking down a character in the character selection screen so that no other player can choose it.
- Irrevocably: In a manner that cannot be taken back
- K/D: K/D or Kill/Death ratio is one of the stats of a player which shows the number of kills per death.
- Lag: In online gaming, Lag refers to the delay between the input and the output
- Level Up: Most games have some form of level system.
- Leveraging: Investing with borrowed money as a way to amplify potential gains (at the risk of greater losses)
- Mashing: Mashing, or button mashing, is when you press buttons at a fast rate. A “button masher” can negatively refer to a game where you don’t need to strategize and can just hit random buttons to win, or someone who plays a game in this way. In certain scenarios,
- MMORPG: Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game – huge online adventure games with many players.
- MOBA: Multiplayer Online Battle Arena – similar to MMORPG’s but based on arena fighting.
- MOD: A mod (“modification”) is any kind of player-made change to a game. Mods can range from small tweaks that fix bugs to entirely new games built on the original’s core.
- MP: MP, which is an acronym for magic points or mana points, is the resource you need to use spells and other special abilities in some games often RPGS
- NERF: When a vendor feels a particular weapon is too overpowered and wants to balance the game.
- No Scope: When you right-click while using a sniper weapon to get a closer scope sight. No-scoping is what happens when someone kills you without zoom.
- NOOB: A noob refers to someone who is clearly new at a game. It can be used as an insult but it’s not necessarily a pejorative.
- NPC: Non-player characters that are the storytellers of the game and often found in RPG’s giving quests.
- OCARINA: Egg-shaped terra cotta wind instrument with a mouthpiece and finger holes
- OP: The gaming term OP means overpowered; OP is used in connection to a strong in-game weapon or a player who alone can take on multiple players.
- PEEL: Peeling is the act of taking an enemy’s attention away from an ally and onto yourself.
- Ping: Ping is the measurement of time from server to player. In some cases, this can be a simple graphic bar similar to the one on your cellphone.
- Play Around: Work with in an amateurish manner
- POGGERS: POGGERS is a gaming slang mostly limited to the gaming streaming service Twitch.
- Port: A last ditch effort to make more money. Sometimes, game companies port a game to PC without acknowledging controls or even quality settings.
- Predictability: The capacity to be known or expected in advance
- PVP: Player versus player.
- PWNED: PWNED means to dominate enemy players in a match with good skills and gameplay.
- QTE: This gaming acronym stands for “quick-time event.” QTES are segments in games where you have to suddenly press a button or some other input to avoid damage or a game over.
- RAGEQUIT: RAGEQUIT is when a player leaves an ongoing match because of anger or frustration of losing.
- RNG: RNG stands for “random number generator.” This refers to elements in games that aren’t the same every time you play.
- RPG: An RPG, or role-playing game, is a broad genre. Typically, they are story-rich games with immersive worlds, where your character has a variety of stats and items that you increase through battling monsters and completing quests.
- RTS: Real Time Strategy – complete top-down unit control.
- RUBBERBANDING: Common in games like Battlefield when lag causes your character or vehicle to spring back and forth when syncing with the server.
- Safety Net: A large strong net to catch circus acrobats who fall or jump from a trapeze
- Sandbox: Explore and have some fun
- Saturate: Infuse or fill completely
- Sequel: Something that follows something else
- Shooter: A person who shoots
- Sim: Simulation – games that simulate life and jobs.
- Skin: A skin is a cosmetic change to a character that has no effect on gameplay.
- Smurf: These are not the little blue people you watched growing up. Smurf refers to a player with a high skill set in gaming terms who competes with players of low skill set via a new “smurf-account” or someone else’s account.
- Subject Matter: What a communication that is about something is about
- Take A Chance: Take a risk in the hope of a favorable outcome
- Tank: A tank is a common character class whose role is generally to suck up damage and make space so their teammates can perform other tasks, like killing the enemy.
- Toxic: In gaming slang, Toxic’s phrase refers to a player who is irritated or rude to his teammates or the opposite team.
- Transformer: An electrical device changing one voltage to another
- TTK: Time to kill is gaming slang, which refers to the average time taken to kill an enemy player in a gunfight.
- Uncharted: Not yet surveyed or investigated
- Use Up: Use up (resources or materials)
- Utilize: Put into service
- Video Game: A game played against a computer
- XP: XP is short for experience points, a common measure of your progress in lots of genres.
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