MMORPG - Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game
Tank - In a RPG, the player in your party who can dish out and take the most damage, so is usually upfront in a group confrontation
Turtling (2): In a Capture the Flag game, most games do not allow a capture unless your own team’s flag is in your possession. Turtling is when the team member with the flag retreats to a heavily-defended area and awaits the return of his own flag. Considered poor sportsmanship by many.
Rocket/grenade jump: To throw an explosive at one’s own feet to allow the explosion to propel the player to otherwise unreachable areas.
Base Rape: To attack an enemy team’s infrastructure by destroying items (shield generators, turrets, unmanned vehicles) in and around the base.
In an RTS game, this can also refer to building up a base first until it’s pretty self sufficent, then concentrating all energy on taking out the enemy base.
Also works on nearly all Konami releases for GameBoy (the original- never got into that “advance” malarkey)
Sway Factor- When a driving or flying game is so involving you find yourself leaning into corners while you mash the controller. See F-Zero.
Oh, a really obvious one.
Justin Bailey: The everything code for Metroid. Also allows you to play as Samus without her spacesuit. Instead she is wearing a swimsuit or “just in Bailey” (a brand of swimsuits).
pwn = Variant of ‘own’, probably created through a typo. Also, pwned
2-box = When one player is running two characters at once, typically by having two different computers right next to each other. Less-common variants are ‘3-box’, ‘multi-box’, etc. Also, box - “Sure, I’ll box your character for the raid, but I suck at two-boxing so he’ll probably just be auto-following me most of the time.”
Aimbot (Also see Bot, above) A program that autodetects and locks on targets, giving a player’s character instantaneous perfect aim. Considered cheating in many Deathmatch contests.
Chasecam A viewpoint programmed to follow a player. Third Person Shooters are games where the default is a Chasecam view of your character. Can also be used to allow non-playing spectators to watch tournements. (Half-Life has a Chasecam option to allow play in Third Person mode).
Not really. It’s concentrating on defense and waiting for the opponent to make the first move to gain the advantage of static defenses and prepare for a counter assault. In some games, like “Generals,” this may include building cross-map long range weapons as your offense.
Boom: RTS term where the focus is on building the economy first/fast for maximum resources mid-game.
Rush: RTS term for putting initial resources into military for a quick civilian kill before the opponent has set up a defense.
TK: Team-killer. Used in multiplayer squad FPSs as a term for, well, you know.
Nerf: (MMORPG) When the developers change the stats of a class/profession because it’s believed to be too powerful relative to other classes.
Con: (MMORPG) Short for consider. Usually consists of a color scale that one should “consider” before attacking a mob (AI monster). White, Green, Blue, Orange, Red, Black is a typical spectrum from easy to difficult.
Spray & Pray: Used in MP FPS’s where a player is surprised by an encounter and takes no time to aim but just empties the clip in the general area.
gg: good game
gj: good job
n1: nice one
lagger: The a-hole with the 56k who’s slowing down the whole party and is soon to be “booted” (kicked out of game by host).
jaggies: rough edges on graphic elements.
Button Masher: a game that takes little skill save hitting the buttons fast.
4X: stands for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate. A large scale strategy game where you are the leader of an empire, and must manage each of the Xs to win. There are also usually options for diplomacy and research to improve your empire in various ways. Classic examples are the Civilization and Master of Orion series.
server: for multiplayer games, the machine that keeps track of all the players and their actions. In MMO games, the servers are run by the game company to minimize cheating. Different servers for the same MMO have the same general world, but different players and possibly different quests or stories.
rush: in RTS games, refers to building a bunch of cheap, fast units in an effort to overwhelm your opponent.
Spam: Similar to “Spray and Pray,” but usually referring to grenades/mines or other large explosives that linger on the playing field to discourage the movements of enemy players. Also to fire without knowledge of the enemy’s location (“spamming the air vents”).
Turret Farm: An area with a large amount of non-player turrets.
Ninja (adjective): Anything done by sneaking behind enemy defenses. Ex: ninja flag grabbing, ninja sniping, ninja equipment deployment.
Pixel hunt: Dragging the mouse cursor around the screen in hopes of discovering something otherwise unseen. In games using the cursor (mainly adventure games such as the earlier Monkey Island series or King’s Quest), some items are ridiculously small or hidden in the background.
Bunnyhop- Continuously jumping in a FPS game, so as to make yourself a difficult target. Bunnyhopping is abused in some games- more recent games usually balance this out though jumping limitations or accuracy penalties for jumping.
COF- Abbreviation of Cone of Fire. In FPS games, the Cone of fire is an imaginary cone extending from the barrel of the gun to the edge of its max range. Bullets will randomly hit anywhere in that cone, and the smaller the cone is, the more accurate the weapon.
Gosu- A term popularized by Korean Starcraft players to meen ‘leet’ and also ‘flawless’ (A gosu build order).
Lan Hack- In LAN games, the unscrupulous practice of peeking at your opponent’s monitor to see where they are hiding/where their base is, etc.
Nade- Shortening of grenade. Most FPS games have rather notorious grenades due to their crowd-clearing potential and difficulty in avoiding. “The Berlin map in Battlefield 1942 is nothing but nade spamming”
Nerf- When developers make a game update and balance things out by weaking a weapon/faction/unit/etc.
Pixie- In a fighting game, a character which is very quick and able to outmaneuver the opponent. Pixie characters are generally small, and have air dash and a double or even triple jump.
Turreting- While in a VTOL or spaceship, the practice of turning in place to fire at an enemy, emulating a turret by being stationary.
As a general rule, gamers typically abbreviate most terms down to one syllable, either the first or last.
Starcraft abbreviations- rine, siege, lot, goon, ling, lisk, hydra, muta, sair, temp
Cheese Any number of strategies - particularly in fighting games - designed to prevent your opponant from acting while allowing you to kick their asses. Frowned upon in 2 (or more) player games, completely valid vs computer opponants. Popular example: Backing them into a corner/knocking them out of the ring with a series of quick-kicks.
I’ve seen that term used to describe the act of killing one of your own team-mates, derived as it was from the Vietnam-era practice of tossing a nade into your officer’s hooch.
“Teamkill”, “teamkiller” or “tk’er” have the same meaning.
Rail-shooter: A game where the players have little or no say in where they go or what they chose (i.e., the game is as un-steerable as a train on rails). The player’s only job is to press the right button at the right time. The Star Wars game Rebel Assault is an example of a rail-shooter.
Turn-Based Strategy: game in which turns are taken one player at a time in a round. Player One moves/attacks/passes. Results are tabulated. Turn moves to Player Two, Three, etc., until all players have had their turn, at which point Player One begins the next round.
Farming: or Farming Loot (or Lewt). The act of replaying one secion of a game/area over and over to collect specific resources or drops. Seen often in MMORPGs and Diablo 2.
Closely related to “farming” is worm-farming, a strategy used in the NetHack and Angband rogue-like series. When your character is new you can gain valuble experience by allowing worm masses to mulitply, and then picking them off one-by-one in a corridor.
There are a lot of other rogue-like terms, but “worm-farming” is the only one I can think of that’s both unique to rogue-likes and used in more than one game series.
Frob, verb, to reverse the polarity of a switch. Usage example: “He frobbed the door and it swung open.” Generally heard most on sites dedicated to Thief: the Dark Project and other Looking Glass games.
Save point - a point in the game where you can save your game. Found mainly in console rpgs.
Quicksave - an ability to save at any point in a game, with the press of a button.
Bonus stage/level - A level where you can’t die, where the aim is just to get points, powerups, extra lives, etc.
‘guess the verb’ puzzle - problem in text adventures, where you need to work out the exact phrase needed to solve a puzzle. E.g. If I need to put out a fire with a bucket of water, I must ‘extinguish fire with bucket of water’, rather than ‘put out fire with bucket of water’, ‘douse fire with bucket of water’, etc.
Cheat device - Cute, somewhat outdated term for a peripheral designed to affect certain aspects of a game.
Code - The basic unit of a cheat device, consisting of one or more entries, that has a specific effect on a game.
Entry - A string of characters, typically two sets of eight, which form a building block for a code.
Version - The “number” of a cheat device. Typically, later versions have new features added and more codes available.
Honor - One of those wacky videogaming non-sequiturs.
Hey, this is the only reason I still play video games at all! Lay off! 