Git Rekt M8

As you may or may not know I am an avid video game player. I have been playing games ever sense I was a kid and in the last few years I've even tried my hand at competitive gaming and the E-sports scene. And as with being apart of any community, over the years I have picked up my fair share of gaming lingo. Just like any other group of people with a common interest video game players have their own dialect differences and unique vocabulary. One of the most interest aspects is that because so many people play video games that lots of these phrases have even carried over into everyday conversations. So for today's post I figured I'd just go over some of the most common and most unique jargon I use when i'm playing with other people online.  Almost every term on this list and most gaming lingo can be traced back to the game Counter Strike. Which is considered one of the first competitive online video games and the founding father of e-sports.

The first term I'll talk about is probably the most well known and most used outside of the gaming community, And that is the word "noob". Now there are many variations of this word (Scrub, newb, pleb) but they all  mean the same thing. Noob is a noun, it means someone who is very new to something and therefore not very good at it. In some cases it can also just mean someone who is very bad at something, though this is less common. It stem from the term newby, and is was so widely used in gaming that it bled over in to non gamer vocabulary. 

Second only in popularity to noob is the term "HP'. Standing for "hit points" this term actually comes from old school Dungeons and Dragons  (yes that game with the little miniature wizards figures and dice your dad played in high school) Hp refers to a characters health or how much life they have. 

"GG" is another very widely used gaming term. Short for good game it's mostly used as a polite pleasantry at the end of a match. Especially if the game was very close or dynamic and fun to play.  

"AFK" is another abbreviation used very commonly. Short for away from keyboard, it's used to tell you teammates that you have to get up from the game to do something. So that you will be away from your keyboard or controller and be unable to play or respond for a short time.  

A little less commonly used are the two phrases "Git rekt" and "Git gud". Both of these are different spellings of get good, and get wrecked. The triumphant battle cry of the victor, this is said to any player who you beat or won against with a significant lead. Usually in an embarrassing or shameful fashion for the loser.  

"Kiting" is a term used in certain video games to describe a type of tactical play. To "kite someone is to lead them away from the battlefield while slowly dealing damage to them. Usually this is done in a subtle way to make it seem to them that they are chasing you. By the time they realize it they are out of position and have taken a large amount of damage for them, allowing you or your team to finish them off.  

"RPG" is another term people see a lot today in the gaming community. Short of roleplaying game, this term is used to describe any type of game in which a large amount of choice and customization is given to the player.  'RPG's" let the player design how their character looks, what abilities they have, and what gear they use. "RPG's" also let players have large amounts of freedom, roaming around large maps with many different activities to do.  

"FPS" is another term to describe a type of video game. Short for First-person shooter, FPS games feature a first-person view of the action and are almost exclusively action packed games where your character fights their way through hoard of enemies with a trusty blaster. FPS games are one of the most popular gaming genres out there, with big names like "Call of Duty" and "Halo" being FPS games. 

Our final term for today is "Glass cannon". This is a term to describe a character in a game who is designed to have extremely high offensive capabilities and is able to deal exceedingly high amounts of damage. But as a drawback is fragile and has very low HP and weak armor. Obviously, an actual glass canon would be very fragile but still very dangerous.  

Most of these terms originate from the late 90s and early 2000s when online gaming became a big hit and really took off as a form of mainstream entertainment. And as stated before some of them have worked their way out of the gaming world and into regular conversation. These examples though just barely scratch the surface of the different words and phrases in the video game world that one picks up from playing a variety of games both casually and competitively.