Game lingo

So this entry will be fairly short, I have a lot of work at my internship and its my last week before leaving so I wont have a lot of time for research and editing. Instead this entry will be about the lingo that is commonly used in gaming both by the games themselves and the players.

There is a LONG list of lingo so for now i will just stick to one type, in game communication. Most games that require lots of communication between team mates develop acronyms for faster typing. Usually these messages relay critical information about the game status and are localized to certain games, however there are a couple of general terms.

DPS: Damage per second. This is pretty simple, if a player needs to talk about how fast they can kill or what benefits a certain item can provide they use the word DPS.

Example: "Using a Titanic Hydra I could increase my DPS to 180"

CC: Crowd Control. Crowd Control is a characters ability to prevent movement from the enemy. Crowd control can be direct like freezing someone in place, or indirect like creating a kill zone that discourages movement through a certain region.

Example: "Hey can someone switch to Mei? We need more CC against their Genji"

Team Comp: Team Composition. Used to reference a set up in which a groups powers bounce off of each other, this can be used in many ways.

Example: "would you mind switching to Medic? our team comp could really use a healer"

MS: Movement Speed. This is pretty easy as well. Movement speed is... well... the speed that you can move, players reference this usually when purchasing upgrades.

Example: "Hey do you think i should get these mercury treads? It would be a big boost to my MS"

Re spawn time: Revival time. This is the time it takes for a player to die and then come back to life. Usually players use this when coordinating a teams position.

Example: "Ok i just died so my re spawn times at 15 seconds, we should move the front line back"

Lag: A delay in the server. Lag occurs when a persons Internets is not able to connect to the server as well as all of the other players, and as such all of the actions they input are delayed. The time delay is measured in Ping, in which 1000 ping ~ 1 second.

Example: "Guys, I can't help in this fight, I am lagging"

Rubberbanding: Servers catching up. Rubber banding is when one person is lagging and the server attempts to fix their lost time by continuing their action without their input. Rubber banding can cause a character to appear to teleport and make it near impossible for the player to attack or be attacked.

Example: That should have hit! he is rubber banding!"

On top of players using these phrases, game developers should familiarize themselves with them as well for 2 reasons:

1: Feed back. If you receive feedback from your player base, odds are that they will use lingo commonly associated with the game. In order to save time and confusion you should keep up to date with any new terms that may pop up in the community.

2: Tutorials. If you need to introduce a new player to a game that is heavy on the team work, its important to help familiarize them with the phrases that will by tossed around in a match