Give Me Your Video Game Terms!

Cafe Society
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I’m trying to win a bet here.

Here are some examples:

Jumping Puzzle: A portion of a platformer or 3-D game in which the character may not continue without jumping from object to object until reaching a certain objective. In the classic Jumping Puzzle, failure to successfully leap to an object results in death; other games simply require you to go back and start over…

Power-Up: an item which, when touched/consumed by the onscreen character, restores health or enhances the character in some way (adds a new weapon, provides a temporary force field, allows superleaping, or any number of other possibilities).

Bullet-Time: a game move which sends the game into slow motion, providing more time for the player to pick targets and think about his actions; usually extremely limited. Introduced in the Max Payne video game.

**First Person Shooter (FPS): ** a game in which the player’s point of view is disembodied; he cannot see his onscreen avatar (but may be able to see the avatar’s hands and/or weapons). Examples include Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, Jedi Knight, etc.

Third Person Shooter: similar to a FPS, but the player can see his onscreen avatar, usually from behind. Examples include Max Payne, Resident Evil, and the Tomb Raider games.

**Real Time Strategy (RTS): ** a game in which the player controls a mass of individual units, and must defeat other players’ units (or the computer’s). The game is NOT played in turns, and occurs in real time. RTS games also usually involve resource-gathering and technology development, as well as combat between armies or skirmish groups.

Any more you can think of? Humorous ones are acceptable, but they have to be in more or less general use.

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Role Playing Game (RPG): Those D&D type games.

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1-Up (aka “Free Guy”): Earning an additional life (or credit) in a game.

Resident Evil Control Scheme: Any game that uses a fixed camera and forces players to go forward by pressing up regardless of the direction they are facing is referred to as the Resident Evil Control Scheme.

Cut Scene: Any scripted video that uses the game engine to show an event.

Deathmatch: Usually seen in FPSs, a mode of play where multiple people compete for the highest number of kills.

Oh and gratuitous, on-topic plug…

I write for Gaming Target and one of our long term goals is to create a video game term database.

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Easter Egg - A hidden object in a game which doesn’t actually help the player. Just for kicks.

Expansion Pack - An add-on for an already established game.

Mod - A modification of an existing game.

Flight Sim - A game focusing on piloting various types of aircraft. Ranges from simplistic to nearly real-life controls.

God Sim - A game which places you in a godlike position, giving you control of miracles, weather, populations, etc.

Patch - An official game update meant to fix bugs, solve balance issues, and add minor improvements.

Beat 'em Up - A game focusing on beating up hordes of bad guys, limited to hand-to-hand combat or melee weaponry.

Fighting Game - A game pitting one character against one other character using a complex series of attacks.

Now tell us what the bet is.

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Bah. For Mod, above.

Mod - A modification of an existing game, generally done by players rather than a software company.

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Many popular or cultish video games develop terminologies of their own. From playing Ultima Online I’ve picked up:

PK: Player Killing or Player Killer
PvP / PvM: Player v. Player / Player v. Monster.
Looting aka Ganking: Taking someone’s belongings after you’ve PKed them.
Regs: Short for Reagents, ingredients you need sometimes to perform spells. Some sharts are no-reg shards, where you can cast unlimited spells without reagents, others require you to purchase reagents.
Mounts: Things you ride on. Horses, dragons, bears, zostriches.
Reds and Blues: Concisely, reds are players who mainly kill other players. Their names appear red. Blues are players who either PK rarely enough that they can keep from getting the “Murderer” title, or who don’t PK at all. There’s a lot more hostility between reds and blues on some shards over others.
Pots: What Full Mana Refresh potions are referred to as.

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Konami Code (aka The Code): At the title screen of certain early NES Konami games (Contra, Gradius, Life Force) press Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start for 30 lives.

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Boss: the final monster or opponent of a given area or level. Almost always tougher than standard opponents, sometimes invulnerable to conventional attacks, in which case the boss must be killed using some portion of the environment.

Kiting: Killing In Transit, or slaying opponents while on the move.

Strafing: Moving sideways (perpendicular to the direction of forward motion) without turning. Found in both first-person and third-person games that involve controlling a single character.

Circle-strafing: Combining strafing with turning to circle a target while facing it. Allows the player to continuously attack a target while minimizing the target’s opportunity to attack back (since its turning to face him/her all the time).

Mob: Mobile OBject. Generally, monsters in MMO games are referred to as Mobs. This one took me a while to get used to, as I think of “a mob” as referring to a group.

Buff: An ability which temporarily increases the abilities of a PC, such as regeneration rate, defense or damage.

Debuff: an ability which temporarily decreases the abilities of an opponent.

Kill-Stealing (aka KSing): Taking a kill (of a mob) away from another player. Generally regarded as odious behavior on par with PKing.

Spawn Point: A location in the game that is known to produce mobs at intervals.

Camping: Waiting at a known spawn point for a mob (often a named mob) appear, either to fulfill a quest, get a specific drop, or simply to grind.

Quest: An assigned task in the game.

Fedex Quest: A “go deliver this to person” or “go get this from person and bring it back” quest. Generally regarded as boring and unimaginative. I first heard this applied to Daggerfall, which was chock-full of Fedex Quests.

Drop: the rewards given from killing a mob in the game.

Grinding: Killing mobs for XP purely to level. Avoiding or bypassing the role-playing aspects of an MMO game in order to most efficiently level a character for increased power.

Main: In MMOs, players may have multiple characters. One is usually referred to as a “main” indicating its status as the highest-level and most-played character.

Alt: Alternate character. Players with more than one character in a given MMO will refer to secondary/tertiary/etc. characters as “alts”

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I don’t think it counts as a “game term” when in real life you use the same word to describe the same thing.

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Lvl Warp: Skipping one or more levels

Exploit: Taking advantage of a loophole in the game rules.

Run 'n Gun: Games that require little thought but full clips.

Gib: Destroying a monster they blow into little pieces.

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Fedex Quests are also known as Fetch Quests.

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Meat Shield: When you have a NPC in your party that’s only good for taking the damage for you.

Pack Mule: Has gone through a few mutations. At first they were NPCs that were only good for carrying your excess items.

Tweaking/Twinking/etc: creating a character for a specific purpose and giving it gear it shouldn’t normally have on the level it’s on.

Lamer: someone that is just out to ruin everyone else’s good time.

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HP: Health points or hit points (I thought about making this a topic, but never got around to it.). The amount of energy a character has.
Critical Hit: Multiplies the normal amount of an attack will usually do by a constant (e.g. in Pokemon 1.5, in Fire Emblem 3).

I guess that’s what you’re asking for…

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just to mix it up a bit:

D&D RPG: dungeons and dragons RPG with the dice throws and memorised spells,
CRPG: computer RPG with mana points,
Console RPG: final fantasy RPG with a linear storyline,
FPS RPG: system shock, deux ex etc,
Arcade RPG: diablo,
and ___ RPG: anything that has assignable stats to characters…

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Power Gaming: ignoring game balance and just trying to build the most powerful character you possibly can. Creates weird divides in role playing games with some saying it’s not truly role playing.

Owning: When you completely overpower your opponent you ‘own’ them.

noob: may come from chat as well but when someone is new and don’t know the rules or how to play the game correctly they are a noob.

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Consolitis: When a game is ported from a console to the PC and hasn’t been tweaked for the PC or its gameplay is what is more suited for a console it has Consolitis.

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What, nobody has mentioned frag, the art of blowing your opponent into fragments?

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Terms that are real -
Bot - A player character that is using a script to automate tasks such as killing enemies.

Broken - A legal aspect of the game that allows characters to get ridiculously overpowered. (The Math Skill from Final Fantasy Tactics, for example, allows you to instantaneously cast magic on multiple enemies using statistics.)

Cliff Sniping - Attacking the enemy from a vantage point (usually the wall of a cliff) that prevents the enemy from reaching the player. (Ragnarok Online)

Side-Scroller - Features the game character running along a two-dimensional background that restricts movement to four directions (up, down, forwards, backwards). Some sidescrollers don’t allow backtracking once the “scroll” has moved beyond a certain point. (Example: Super Mario Bros.)

to Scroll - a contraction of “to warp back to town using a scroll”, from the Diablo games.

Status Ailment - a temporary impediment (such as poison) that puts your character at a disadvantage.

Terms that might not be real, but used among my gamer friends -
Bottomless Pit - A hole that, if fallen into, results in either death or severe damage.

Edge-Death - Killing an opponent by repeatedly knocking them off the edge of the platform or screen. (Used in the Smash Bros. games)

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God mode: (also called “wizard mode”) puts your character into an invulnerable state. Used by developers for debugging purposes. Used by cheaters to, uh, cheat.

First-person sneaker: A first-person perspective game that promotes the use of stealth over violence. At the most difficult levels, you are forbidden to kill anyone, although blackjacking (or otherwise knocking the opponent unconcious) is allowed. True die-hards will avoid even this and try to remain completely undetected while robbing everyone blind. First encountered in “Thief: The Dark Project” by the late, great Looking Glass Studios.

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Turtling. In a fighting game, to stay in a low crouch to force your opponent to advance towards you, so you can wallop them when they get close. Also see Cheap.