Which video game buzzword or term to you hate most?

...umm, I think "The Cloud" sounds silly.

That's about it...totally fine with all the others; didn't even realize some were buzzwords, and I don't think I've ever seen "Ludonarrative Dissonance" before.

'Epic' doesn't bother me that much, I just ask them if whatever they're talking about has chariots in it. Prince of Persia: Two Thrones was pretty epic...

"For the win/fail", and stuff being 'full of' such things is something I find very tiresome. 'Leetspeak' is unique among dialects in that every word in its vernacular roughly translates as "I'm a massive douchebag".

Think we're getting away from buzzwords here though.

gamer

@capum15: ludonarrative dissonance is basically when a character is depicted as something and then the gameplay depicts them in the opposite way;

see Tomb Raider, FC3

port

Ludonarrative Dissonance for me. Clint Hocking did not know what bastard monstrosity he was unleashing when he wrote it. How it'd be latched onto and siphoned by hacks to explain away shit they just don't like.

my god "digital download" is so dumb. damn I miss the days of analog downloads. So much more richer, warmer experiences. The bits just had, I don't know, more color, more flavor. You could zoom in and see those sweetass rounded curves up in those square waves. Fuck yeah analog bits.

@video_game_king: Wolfenstein fan, I see. :)

When dipshits use a $ symbol instead of an S.

"Emergent" is a pretty egregious one. I don't even know what that could possibly mean on a specific level.

Gamer.

Fans of the genre agree, this poll is a mixed bag.

More broadly, it's when the story advocates one idea and the gameplay advocates something wildly different. I, too, have an example, but I just can't remember it right now. Something about the moods of a game being out of whack.

I disagree with FC3 as an example completely. The entire point of the story was him finding out he's a born killer and actually ENJOYING it. I mean they practically drilled that into your head the entire time how he was enjoying all the killing and fighting and that he couldn't relate to his friends anymore.

None of these annoy me at all. Stop being such a grumpy person.

Ohhh, I hate the ludo-bullshit-lazyass-dissonance word too.

@demoskinos said:

When I hear "Triple A" I assume we're talking about a shooter with cover mechanics. And then I try to change the topic.

Ludonarrative-dissonance kind of bugs me, because it seems to be frequently utilized by folks that would not say anything like that in a normal circumstance. Which means that it ends up feeling like a canned sound-bite even when it was probably coined with good intentions.

Hardcore is another one that is really troublesome, but that is more of a personal distaste at the existence of a gamer culture marketing setup. Marketing targeted at a caricature of a sub-group is kind of nakedly evil as it involves devaluing that sub-group in the eyes of the rest of society while performing a really lame sort of fan-service to a even smaller fraction of that group. E.g. Mountain Dew and Doritos cross-promotions with Call of Duty / Xbox put out the sort of stereotype that is not flattering at all.

Metroidvania

Drivatar God damn it

pwn/pwned, without a doubt. It's the fucking worst.

@jasonr86:

I actually like it quite a bit. I find it to be a pretty useful term for pointing out why a game doesn't function.

Well, 'ludonarrative dissonance' and anything else from the same lexicon of pompous pseudo-academic horseshit is certainly annoying, but I'm pretty good at not coming into contact with most of it.

As far as things developers say, the term "gameplay loop" kind of makes my skin crawl when someone says it aloud, even though it's a valid way to describe the design of most games.

What's wrong with Polish? :( I love CD Project!

@draxyle said:

http://gambit.mit.edu/updates/audio/looking_glass_studios_podcast/

Here's a podcast series with some people who made a few premiere examples of emergent gameplay. If you don't know what it means it sounds like complete bull; once you've experienced it it's the best thing in gaming.

"AAA"- its a useless that has no meaning and doesn't describe anything but everyone uses it anyway.

"The Cloud"- Its really just dedicated servers, not magic or whatever MS might have you believe it is.

"Emergent gameplay"- I don't get this phrase needs to be used constantly to describe a certain type of gameplay. Its annoying and needs to go away

"Cinemaniac"- Just a fancy way of saying your going to take the gameplay out of my hands and direct the gameplay experience for me. It just sounds better if you say cinematic than if you say what I just said.

' Core gamer ' drives me mad.

"Innovative" was driving me a little up the wall during e3.

The Cloud, because it's generally complete bullshit. I'm not even an always-online hater when it's done right, but 'The Cloud' is often just used as a bullshit excuse for why something has to be always online.

I hate the word buzzword.

Pretty much word for word for me with those words as well.

None of this stuff bothers me.

Although, I dislike the title of "Gamer". It's not how I see myself or my enthusiast friends. Or any of you for that matter, it's how I see cunning old gamblers that would grift you for all the money you've got as soon as shake your hand.

So I'll go with "other"

Other: "Gamers" and "addictive gameplay".

I just wanted to take a moment to say how I appreciated the first two replies both being Dr Lucien Sanchez avatars.

Ludonarrative Dissonance. I think some interesting things can arise when a game addresses the issue, but for the most part I just find any criticism directed at a game due to it mostly a lazy attempt at intelligent sounding criticism that to me just speaks to the person's priorities being backwards.

Emergent - No idea how that relates to gameplay. Really I don't.

Endearing - Used way too often around here. Particularly on the bombcast. Not so much now, but for a number of weeks it was really overused.

The Cloud - Oh you're going to store data on the cloud? You mean your servers? I don't mind when it's used to reference cloud-computing or processing. But just stop using it so much to simply refer to remote data storage.

Misogyny - For some reason when that word was being thrown around in the video game industry early this year, at the EXACT SAME TIME, it was being thrown around in politics here in Australia. The timing of it was ridiculous. I can't fucking stand that word being used to describe sexism. Sony were labelled misogynists for not having females at their press conference. The leader of the opposition was labelled a misogynist by our then-current (and now former as of 3 days ago) female Prime Minister, due to some things that he said that could be labelled as sexist. The meaning of the term implies HATE for women. HATE! The man does not HATE women. By all means he might be sexist (or perhaps just not great with words) but he doesn't HATE women. Misogyny and sexism are very different terms, stop using the stronger one so damn liberally.

That's about it I think. The main one for me is misogyny. The others don't bother me that much.

Not really a buzzword, but it is pretty annoying. Nothing invalidates your opinion quicker than proving that you have a massive bias against a particular company.

"Cinematic experience" are pretty much the last things I want from a game too.

Visceral. It makes the sweet release of death seem so welcoming.

should have been infinite cloud^^

Mobuhl

"Burden of Knowledge" and "Anti-Fun mechanics". Basically, the stupid terminology Riot came up with to differentiate their game.

I understand the need to differentiate your product, but doing so by creating made-up terminology that is to the effect of "fuck that game, ours is better" is very annoying. And really, "Anti-Fun"? That was the best thing they could come up with?

Also "The Cloud" is kind of silly -- but eh, whatever. I understand why they say it, I just dislike when it is overused so much.

There's a browser plugin for Chrome that replaces any instance of "cloud" with "butt". The cloud talk PR from MS becomes more understandable that way, because they're talking outta their

You forgot my "favorite" buzz-word that I can't stand: Metroidvania.

Sexism and/or misogyny. BOOM.

IP/intellectual property. I get that the term has a very well-defined use, but when it's thrown around to mean "a game/a franchise" then we've gone too far.

"epic"

"ground-breaking"

"exclusive"

"dlc"

"day-one dlc"

Because a lot of people seem to have a misconception on what it actually means: Emergent systems in games are systems that are not brought on by the game but by player action. Minecraft is a good example of a game that was praised as "emergent", because the game had no clear objectives, directions and goals. This meant that the player was the one in charge of deciding the system of gameplay they'd be following (exploring, building, farming, discovering materials). Open-world games can usually be a good example of this, as the overworld can give you little specific direction to go in.

A good example of a non-emergent game is something like Sam & Max, Portal or Dance Dance Revolution, which promote a single ideal path without much room for player choice.

Good shout

"programming to the metal"

"<Blank> is a Video Game ass Video Game" as if something being a video game is some kind of shameful thing.