Game Developers and Gamers Need to Learn to Express Themselves Better
A pop culture reference about communication
I shall begin with an anecdote. In my youth when I was at junior school (that’s 7 to 11 years of age in the UK) I was formally introduced to team sports. At that time, I had no prejudice against them and was happy to participate. However, the sports teacher (a curious breed of human per se) often assumed that we knew the rules of all the most popular sports by default. I can remember the guy getting frustrated regarding the “Leg before Wicket” rule in cricket and that some of us didn’t understand it. “What does it mean?” I asked. “It means leg before wicket” he answered in an exasperated tone. He simply didn’t grasp that I wanted a specific answer that explained why this rule was this way . Since then, I’ve encountered many other examples where people assume that you know what they know.
Which segues nicely into video games and gaming culture. Games themselves are filled with common mechanics and systems, often running on shared principles and concepts. Like any other industry it has its own buzzwords and terminology, however this is often complicated by gamer’s own unique slang. Terms such as hit box, DPS, DoT, “aggro”, zerg and other such examples are bandied about like they are part of everyday parlance. I suppose you can argue that high end players who are well versed in game theory, use these terms frequently, as part of their standard lexicon. But once again I must remind everyone that high end players are often not the majority of any gaming community. The average player is not steeped in gaming culture to the same degree and often blithely bumbles about having fun, without knowing “shit about shit” to coin a phrase.
Today I was reading a Star Trek Online build website, trying to see if I could improve the DPS of my primary ship in that MMO. The article used a great deal of acronyms to refer to game skills and systems. Now I don’t know about you but I don’t know the names of every skill I use in STO or any other MMO that I play. I know some like Beam Overload or Fire and Will but many of the others I recognise and use by their icons. I know broadly what they do but I don’t know the specific names. The same can be said for game systems and different types of builds. I am familiar with a common set up like Auxiliary to Battery but not all other permutations in the game. Let it suffice to say that digesting the article’s contents took three times as long because I had to look up every other term being used.
A while ago I discovered a YouTube channel that decided to explore this very phenomenon. Razbuten has created several videos for “non-gamers”, with the assistance of his wife. She has until recently no prior gaming experience and therefore did not have a default grasp of many of the standard gaming mechanics we take for granted. It has proven to be a most illuminating series and often highlights how video games are terrible at explaining themselves. Moving a character in-game using the WASD keys is not as intuitive as you may think. The lack of consistency between games further compounds this problem, especially if the next game you play requires you to use the mouse to move your character and navigate the game world. Furthermore, the days of physical media and instruction manuals are long gone. There’s too much reliance on third party websites to explain stuff these days which raises another problem.
The ability to record game footage and yourself talking and to subsequently upload the results to YouTube does not necessarily mean that you are good at explaining things and communicating with others. It is a course of constant frustration having to search YouTube for a helpful nugget of information for a game such as Guild Wars 2 and having to endure the inarticulate, garrulous inanities of a semi-iterate moron, who sounds like they’re recovering from a major head injury. It’s one of the reasons I prefer written Wikis for gaming information, as I can read quickly and often determine what I need far more efficiently. Imparting correct information, promptly and clearly is a skill. It’s why newsreaders and TV presenters are chosen for their verbal, vocal and presentation skills. Being able to explain complex systems is not something we can all do well.
Another pop culture reference about slang
I was listening to the author Michael Rosen being interviewed recently and he spoke of how his parents would often use Yiddish phrases but never explain them. “You’re acting like a schlemiel. What’s a schlemiel? It’s how you’re acting!” being one such example. I still find that this happens when gamers communicate. Yet considering how gaming has become such a widespread pastime, you’d think that there’d be a similar degree of democratisation regarding the associated terminology. I suspect that certain gamers who consider themselves “gatekeepers” maintain this esoteric approach on purpose, as a way of maintaining some exclusivity and separating themselves from those they disdain. They may not wish to change their ways, but I see no reason why game developers shouldn’t use more accessible terminology. But as common sense hasn’t prevailed for the past three decades, I see no reason why it should now.
