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Video Gaming Terms: Everything You Need To Know. Part 1

Let’s get it straight. If even ten years ago it was relatively easy to hop on the gaming discussions wagon with learning just a list of main slang terms and most important genres, now, with gaming becoming more and more mainstream, it can prove to be quite a challenging task. As the industry grew, more and more genres emerged, some of them niche, some quite the opposite, and the community diversified and got split up into many smaller groups of fans of specific types of games. In this article we will try to cover the most important gaming terms focusing on the classification of it. You don’t have to learn them by heart, it’s enough just to recognize them in the right context.

AAA-game — a high-budget production, an equivalent of blockbuster in the movie industry. Sometimes people refer to AAAA-games being even more expensive productions, but it’s more of an exception. For now, at least. A more common occurrence are AA-games, mid-budget projects like Nier Automata.

Indie games — games from independent studios and solo developers, usually. As the niche grew, the line grew more ambiguous since certain bigger projects with big development teams like Hades arguably are not in the same league as solo developer projects exclusive to Steam or itch.io

Console games — projects for dedicated gaming devices like PS5 and Nintendo Switch. Their exact opposite are PC games meant for personal computers. Some games are exclusive to a certain device or PC, but nowadays there are more PC exclusive projects because of flourishing indie scene than console exclusives.

Cloud gaming — games that can be played using cloud technology on supported devices. In this case the game runs on remote devices, sometimes on a server, and streamed to you. The biggest disadvantage here is the input lag, because of streaming the game reacts to your commands with a slight delay. Sometimes not slight.

VR games — virtual reality games. All games (or at least the vast majority of them) are set in virtual reality, but only VR games require a special headset like Meta Quest 2/3 or PS VR 2. Such games are focused on creating the real immersion and sometimes make you get motion sickness because of how real they feel.

AR games — alternative reality games. Like Pokémon Go, they usually involve some kind of augmentation of reality taken through the camera of the device.

Live service games — games that receive substantial content and feature updates for a prolonged periods of time without making you pay for the additions (or at least some of them). It makes the audience to return to the game even if they completed it. Good examples are Genshin Impact and Fortnite.

Free-to-play games — not to be confused with actual free games, these are projects that you can play for free, but they feature a monetization system with in-game items and/or subscriptions available for purchase for real-world money. Usually it’s skins, booster packs, battle passes and other things like that. Once again, we can bring up Genshin Impact and Fortnite as examples.

DLC — official downloadable content, free or paid, made for a certain game. Usually it’s additional stuff added after the release of the game sold separately, but sometimes DLC are available even at the launch of the game.

Early Access — games that are still in development, but are available to buy and play. Usually developers launch their titles in early access if they want to gather feedback or additional funding. Of course, there are certain risks connected with buying such projects, but usually it’s not that bad. You just need to understand that you buy a WIP project.

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