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Many games spawn an entire vocabulary of jargon related to them, especially multiplayer games where in-game shorthand is useful.




  • Video games as a whole:
    • Dots (or DoTs): Status effects that passively deal damage over time, such as poison. There's also their slightly rarer counterpart(s), HoTs; healing over time effects.
    • Character class names tend to be shortened if they're more than two syllables. Examples: Barb (Barbarian), Engi/Engie (Engineer), Sorc (Sorcerer/ess), Valk (Valkyrie)
    • Metroidvania - Very common nickname for 2D action-adventure game featuring a single large environment you slowly get more and more access to. More specifically used in the Castlevania fandom to draw a distinction between the 'old-school' style of games and the newer ones, circa Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
      • Classicvania - Counterpart to Metroidvania above, when referring to most pre-Symphony Castlevanias, which were linear action/platformers.

  • Video game peripherals:
    • Wiimote: The Wii Remote.
      • Note that this is actually the official name of the controller in French, as it is written on the box and handbooks. The litteral translation "Télécommande wii" is the alternate name: understood but hardly used by anybody.
      • In French-speaking Canada, L'Académie française (or French Academy) exists specifically to maintain the purity of the French language; only words and phrases approved by that department are considered 'real' French. 'Télécommande wii' would make the list of 'official' French, while Wiimote, despite its being the 'official' Nintendo-approved name, would likely not make the cut.
    • "The Nunchuk" was an unofficial name for the prototype control stick attachment, but became official because Shigeru Miyamoto liked it so much.
    • The Duke: The original Xbox controller, before the smaller Type S was adopted as the standard. So named because it was big, broad, and took big manly hands to use comfortably.
    • The Bone Controller: The standard controller packaged with the model 2 NES (a.k.a. the Top-Loader) shaped like a Super NES controller, looking almost like a bone.
    • The Boomerang for this abomination, the original PlayStation 3 controller that was never actually released.

  • Players:
    • Oh, you run a server in Garry's Mod? You also happen to abuse such power? You're an Adminge.
    • Micspammers - people who play a song over the microphone over Team Fortress 2. Usually it is a BONK song.
      • Ninjaneers - Engineers who seem to get more kills with their wrench than with their sentry.
      • Or Engineers that manage to set up a sentry behind the enemies.
    • Leeroys, Leeroying, Leeroy Jenkins - A player who, in an MMORPG, either ignores orders or causes a bunch of unnecessary aggro. Leeroying also refers to an action taken, such as aggroing a group of enemies.
    • MINUS 50 DKP!!!, 50 DKP MINUS!!!, Pakistani Raid Leader - A type of "Stop Having Fun" Guys type of person who loses it when people start messing up or does something stupid. It was named for a raid leader named Dives who, in a viral video for the game World of Warcraft, had said that if people messed up during a raid they would lose 50 DKP. Then when something goes wrong he proceeds to yell and freak out, yelling "THAT IS A *** ING 50 DKP MINUS!!!" at the player. It was thought that he was a Pakistani player on the Europe Servers, since he had a clear accent.
      • The raid leader in question is Dives, a Romanian-born WoW-er who founded and leads a guild known as "Wipe Club," and who used to be in the military. His ranting style is very reminiscent of a Drill Sergeant Nasty, and his other major rants can be heard here.
    • PvPenises - Someone who loves PvP and ganking.
    • A young (or unfortunately high-pitched) gamer who's voice irritates most other players is often known as a "Squeaker".

  • Video game companies:
    • Blizzavision, Actard, Actiblizz - Activision-Blizzard. Latter is much more common in Asia, particularly on lowyat.net.
      • ActiVendiLizzardEra - The amalgamation of Activision, Vivendi, Blizzard and Sierra, post-merger.
    • Squeenix - Square Enix.
    • Micro$oft, M$ - Microsoft Studios
    • Satansoft - Microsoft, originally from Fallout Tactics, the name is quite catchy.
    • Macrohard - "Macro" and "hard" are respectively the opposites of "micro" and "soft".
    • Scamco - John Kricfalusi's Spumco had this name before Namco Bandai (besides the usual Namdai and Bamco) started using it (as the name was made by hard core Gainax fans). "Scamco" is also used particularly by Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune players due to that series' sheer Fake Longevity that requires hundreds of credits to complete its unlocks.
    • Bamco or (less commonly) Banco, shortening Bandai Namco. There's also a derogatory variant "Blamco".note 
    • SNK Delaymore - SNK Playmore, mainly due to the amount of time it took for them to redraw the absurd amount of) characters in the new art style for The King of Fighters XII.
      • SNK Crymore - SNK Playmore, again. Fans fed up with the above use this to tell haters to stop bitching and get over it.
    • Capcpom - Capcom,based on this embarrassing typo at the end of the trailer for Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor.
      • In Russia Capcom is known as "Sarsom" due to interpreting Roman characters for Cyrillic.
    • Idea Fuck - Idea Factory.
    • Team Ninja Dog - Derisive name for Tecmo's Team Ninja studio without Tomonobu Itagaki's involvement. Coined by fans of the modern Ninja Gaiden games mocking those not made or approved by Itagaki (NGIII and the Sigma re-releases in particular).
    • Rockstar Games - Cockstar Games.
    • Bugisoft - Ubisoft, coined by its reputation for delivering buggy releases and never fixing them.
    • Pajeethesda - Bethesda, following the hilariously buggy initial release of Fallout 76.
    • Unicronic Arts - Electronic Arts, coined by Jim Sterling in response to the absurd amount of acquisitions made by EA that result in the acquired studios shutting down due to numerous failed games usually caused by EA's Executive Meddling.
    • It's common enough to mistype Sony's name as Snoy that it's become a full fledged nickname, especially among the Japanese.

  • Video game consoles:
    • Microsoft:
      • Red Ring of Death: The LED indicator that shows up on a broken Xbox 360. Often abbreviated RROD (and pronounced R-rod).
      • The Xbox One has many, many derisive names:
      • Xbox One out of ten.
      • Xbox dONE.
      • XBONEDnote , Xbonenote , eventually corrupted to simply "The Bone". There is simply no way in Hell the name couldn't have come from all the boners Microsoft committed when revealing the console.
      • HTC ONE.
      • Xbox nONE.
      • The fairly gigantic original model of Xbox One is sometimes nicknamed the "VCR" due to having a decent resemblence to one.
      • The premium version of its successor (the Xbox Series X) is the XSex, though it was always going to be due to the way the English language works. Time will tell if it will truly be as good as sex with your ex or not. Some people have also taken to "Excess X".
      • Batsu-Ichi is nickname for Xbox One in Japan. This is due to tremendous failure of the console in this country and country's distaste of Xbox brand.
    • Nintendo:
      • The Purple Lunchbox: The Nintendo GameCube, so named because of its indigo color and weird "handle" at the back.
      • DSPhat: The original Nintendo DS, contrasted with its "slimmer" successors, starting with the DS Lite.
      • The Fatboy/The Brick: The original Game Boy model which looks like a brick, and is almost as tough.
      • The Grey Box and the Toploader which differentiate the classic NES and the new, updated console, respectively.
      • The Wii, for the longest time, was practically its own nickname to the obvious potential for Toilet Humor in how it is officially pronounced.
      • Nintendium - the fictional Made of Indestructium material used to make Nintendo consoles goddamn invincible.
    • Sega:
    • Sony:
      • While PSX refers to the original PlayStation's model number, it never officially bore that name, as shown when Sony used it for a Japan-only PS2 with added features and the PlayStation Experience convention with the same name that started in 2014.
      • Using "Slim" for the revised models of PlayStation platforms (and Super Slim for the slimmer version of that); with the exception of the PSP Slim & Lite (aka the PSP-2000), no PlayStation model has ever used that moniker.
      • "Fearful Harmony" and "Personified Fear" - Software glitches on the original PlayStation made infamous for utterly horrifying any players unfortunate enough to come across them. The former can be seen here, and the latter here.
      • PlayStation 3:
      • George Foreman Grill: due to its bulky design and tendency to run really hot while you're playing it.
      • PS Triple: Another nickname for the PS3, made memetically popular by Chad Warden's video insisting that the PS3 is better than the 360.
      • Yellow Light of Death: The LED indicator that shows up on a broken PS3. Often abbreviated YLOD (and pronounced Y-lod).
      • And Stuart Ashen has just coined a nickname for the PS4: Stealth Toblerone
      • Also Remasteration 4, due to the amount of remastered games.

    • Other consoles/miscellaneous:
      • PS360 - Used, sometimes derisively, to refer to the duo of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, due to a combination of shared features and shared games.
      • WiiS360 - Refers to the trio of seventh-generation consoles. Sometimes refers to someone who has all three.
      • Wii60 - Used to refer to multitude of people who decided to support either the Wii or Xbox 360 after the PS3's initial price was announced.
      • The Toilet: Atari Jaguar, which really resembles one when the never-used CD add-on is attached. Also named because of the questionable quality of its games and its convoluted architecture.
      • Darth Vader: An all-black Atari 2600.
      • 2600 Jr.: The 1986 re-issue of the 2600.

  • Other/Uncategorized
    • Real-Time Strategy Genre: Some strategies which are possible in many of the genre is "Booming" (Emphasizing economy, will probably beat turtling), "Turtling" (Emphasizing a defensive strategy, will probably beat rushing) and "Rushing" (Emphasizing quickly creating a military force to attack as soon as possible, will probably beat booming.)
    • Fuckoff Strong: Title given to any foe that trounces you so badly that your reaction is "Oh fuck OFF!"
    • Gaming seems to be an area where it's not frowned on as much to equate the player receiving a Curb-Stomp Battle with phrases like 'Geez, that boss monster keeps raping me!'.
    • Spacebucks: The virtual currency used to purchase downloadable games for any of the three seventh-generation consoles: actual money for the PS3, Nintendo Points (previously Wii points) for their systems (except for the Nintendo 3DS and WiiU, whose eShops use real money), and Microsoft Points for the Xbox 360. Can also refer to any virtual currency on any website (or online game) that is bought with real money.
      • Also called Funbucks, Funmoney, Funnymoney, Monopoly money (this one being more derisive), and many, many other things, most not so nice.
    • Farming: Doing one particular action over and over again to gain a large amount of the one particular resource that results from this eg. farming EXP by repeatedly killing Metal Slimes or farming items by defeating weak monsters over and over for the random drops.
    • Ragequit: Quitting the game due to frustration before the match actually ends. Generally regarded as unsporting.
    • Black Label: Games released for the Ameican NES between it's launch 1985 and 1987 due to their labels referencing Nintendo of America's initial advertising campaign.note 
    • Winions: A MOBA term used for minions that manage to achieve objectives. This is especially used for minions that manage to destroy the enemy core and win the game for them, reminding players that as weak as minions may be compared to the main heroes, there's a reason you can't just ignore them entirely.
    • There are several of these associated with Nintendo 3DS hacks, aka homebrew.
      • Ninjhax: Uses the game Cubic Ninja
      • Tubehax or YouTubehax: Uses the eShop YouTube app
      • Ironhax: Uses the eShop game Ironfall Invasion
      • OOThax: Uses the The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D cartridge
      • Smashax/SSBhax: Uses the SSB cartridge or its demo
      • Sighax: A boot ROM-level exploit which allows any firmware to run on a 3DS
    • Boomer Shooter: A nickname for retro (or Retreaux) First-Person Shooters in the style of Quake or Doom.
    • Border Gore: Almost always seen within Paradox Interactive games. It refers to borders between different territories and nations that are, not to put a fine point on it, completely fucked up in terms of being bothersome for the player and above all unsightly as hell. Most often seen with AI nations, players have been known to start wars exclusively because the territorial lines look more like a crime scene than a map and they don't want to look at whatever unholy mess of snaking territories and nonsensical enclaves the AI's done this time.
    • Disney Trio of Destruction: A term used by developers and users of the Dolphin emulator to refer to the trio of Disney tie-in games for the Wii which were deceptively difficult if not impossible to emulate even on a relatively powerful desktop computer.
    • Poly Bridge and sequels are referred to as "Government Corruption Simulators" as one of the ways to score high is to be under budget, and so players will build the flimsiest bridge that can still get the car(s) to their destination, safety and sanity standards be damned, the joke being that the money "saved" this way has been embezzled.

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