When I first started playing competitive games I had absolutely no idea what I was doing let alone that there was an entire world of gaming vernacular that existed. I’m pretty sure a dictionary could be made out of all the terms, call outs, and shortened words that the gaming community uses to communicate important info as quickly as possibly. There are a variety of different terms out there that are game specific but below I have listed the 50 must know terms that will hopefully help you be a lot less lost than I was.
General Gaming Terminology
- FPS (First-Person Shooter)
- MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena)
- MMO/MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online/Role-Playing Game)
- RTS (Real-Time Strategy)
- BR (Battle Royale)
- PvP (Player versus Player)
- PvE (Player versus Environment)
- DPS (Damage Per Second)
- HP (Health Points/Hit Points)
- AoE (Area of Effect)
Gameplay Mechanics
- Cooldown (Time before ability can be used again)
- Respawn (Return to game after being eliminated)
- Buff (Positive status effect)
- Debuff (Negative status effect)
- CC (Crowd Control – stuns, slows, etc. Some characters cannot be CC while ulting)
- Meta (Most effective tactics available. Common things during a patch that are the most effective)
- OP (Overpowered. Patches often create metas with overpowered abilities / characters)
- Nerf/Buff (Weakening/Strengthening of character or ability)
- Hitbox (Area where a character can be hit)
- Camping (Staying in one location to ambush players. Often talked down about)
Competitive Gaming Terms
- Rank/ELO (Competitive skill rating or Ranked Rating)
- Smurf (Experienced player using new account)
- Boosting (Having better player use your account or play with you to carry you to higher ranks)
- Tilted (Getting really emotionally frustrated often anger)
- GG (Good Game, often typed after matches sometimes sarcastically)
- BM (Bad Manners, shooting bodies etc.)
- Leaderboard (Ranking of top players often top 500 and then the rank below that)
- Clutch (Successful play or round win in a difficult or disadvantageous situation)
- Ace (Eliminating the entire enemy team)
- Toxic (Negative/harmful behavior, causing problems)
Communication Terms
- Callout (Alerting team to enemy positions)
- Ping (Communication marker or connection quality)
- Comms (Voice/text communication)
- AFK (Away From Keyboard)
- Int/Inting (Intentionally Feeding – dying on purpose)
- Carry (Player who leads team to victory)
- IGL (In Game Leader, professional teams have these to coordinate, often the smartest player)
- Rotate (Moving from one area to another, often moving from one site to another)
- Push (Advancing aggressively)
- Focus (Concentrate attacks on specific target)
Technical Terms
- FPS (Frames Per Second – performance, associated with your monitor’s Hz)
- Ping (Connection speed in milliseconds)
- Latency/Lag (Delay between input and game response)
- Rendering (How game displays graphics)
- Hotkeys/Keybinds (Keyboard shortcuts, players often change default settings to other keybinds like mouse buttons etc. )
- FOV (Field of View)
- Sensitivity (Mouse/controller movement speed)
- Netcode (Network synchronization)
- Client/Server (Game architecture)
- Tick Rate (Server update frequency)
There are so so so many different terms throughout the gaming community so I’ll be sure to make some more lists in the future based on what I have learned in each game. If you have a game in mind that you want me to research and write about let me know in the comments <3.