Glossary of Gaming Jargon
Introduction
One of the main problems with discussing a particular hobby is that most hobbies have developed a large and complicated vocabulary of unique jargon and terminology. This makes it difficult to dicuss your hobbies with someone who isn't already somewhat familiar with it. In fact, if both party's vocabularies are different enough, then they might as well be using different languages entirely, as a lot of details get lost in translation.
A lot of the time, terminology is created around what something is or what that something does, and you can use some basic guesswork to follow a conversation that's using words you don't know. This is true across disciplines and fields, so it's a good habit to practice.
For example, you might not know what a car's "rocker arm" is, but you can guess by the name that it's some sort of mechanical "arm" that's supposed to move in a rocking motion -- which is exactly the case. Similarly, a character in a video game may have a "nearly empty health bar". A "health bar" sounds like some sort of indicator of how much "heath" a character has, so if that indicator is nearly empty, then the character is about to die. Whether that's good or bad depends on the game or situation. In this case, a person's tone of voice can fill in the gaps: if they're excited, it's probably a good thing. If they're sounding worried, scared, or frustrated, then it's probably a bad thing.
Guesswork like this is fine and all, but sometimes it helps to have a more concrete understanding of what things mean. That's the idea behind this glossary; every page on this site uses jargon where appropriate, but also highlights the slang term, making it link to its definition. You can uses this feature to look up terms as you encounter them, or you can simply browse the glossary directly using the links below.
A lot of the time, terminology is created around what something is or what that something does, and you can use some basic guesswork to follow a conversation that's using words you don't know. This is true across disciplines and fields, so it's a good habit to practice.
For example, you might not know what a car's "rocker arm" is, but you can guess by the name that it's some sort of mechanical "arm" that's supposed to move in a rocking motion -- which is exactly the case. Similarly, a character in a video game may have a "nearly empty health bar". A "health bar" sounds like some sort of indicator of how much "heath" a character has, so if that indicator is nearly empty, then the character is about to die. Whether that's good or bad depends on the game or situation. In this case, a person's tone of voice can fill in the gaps: if they're excited, it's probably a good thing. If they're sounding worried, scared, or frustrated, then it's probably a bad thing.
Guesswork like this is fine and all, but sometimes it helps to have a more concrete understanding of what things mean. That's the idea behind this glossary; every page on this site uses jargon where appropriate, but also highlights the slang term, making it link to its definition. You can uses this feature to look up terms as you encounter them, or you can simply browse the glossary directly using the links below.
Table of Contents
Alphabetical Listing
Why look at one category when you can view a list of every term documented in the glossary? This page provides such a list, all neatly laid out in alphabetical order for easy browsing.
Gaming Jargon
Over the years, a lot of things about video games have become standardized. This includes the terms that are commonly used to describe things players have encountered in games, and the many ways they've learned to entertain themselves in the gaming community. The terms shown in this category are things you'll probably hear about when talking to gamers of any age.
Internet Culture
The internet is a huge place, and it's arrival changed almost every aspect of modern living. It also brought with it a large amount of new concepts and ideas, many of which needed a name. Thus, an entirely new realm of language was born, and this category provides a small guide to what can be found in the online world.
Magic and Supernatural Things
Fiction is loaded with many different forms of magic, and there are even more supernatural concepts found in the religions of the world. But, since people typically aren't exposed to things outside of their own religion or culture, I've provided brief descriptions of these symbols, concepts, and cultural artifacts in these glossary entries.
Technical Terms
One of the biggest downsides of people developing new technologies is that it always creates a slew of new words to explain what everything is and how it operates. Thankfully, it's becoming less and less essential for the average user to understand most of the terms listed in this category, but it never hurts to know what's going on under the proverbial hood.
Types of Video Games
This is largely discussed on the page titled "What types of games are there?", but since it's practically impossible to list every possible genre and subgenre, you'll find a lot of them listed here.
Useful Information
Entries here don't neatly fit into any of the other categories, and this is often because these pages deal with issues and concepts beyond slang or jargon. Basically, these are short articles instead of typical glossary definitions.