Next Gen

Every new update or new version of almost any hardware or software is described as "next gen". If a game or any kind of computer is being offered for sale in the present time, and is its newest version, it is current, not next, generation. Whenever I see this, benefit of the doubt is lowered and suspicion is raised. (Except when used in a cunning and insightful critique of such practices. Wink.)

IP

When used as short for intellectual property, not internet protocol, to descibe a game or literary series or world. This one bothers for two reasons.
One is the reduction of often beautiful, mysterious and fantastic realms of imagination to shorthand commodity. Imagine if one (you) knew about Edgar Allen Poe's works when some, but not all, had been published and saying something like "I can't wait for that new Poe IP to drop." (shudder).
The other is the implied endorsement of the idea that all ideas should be bought and sold and are to be measured by their financial worth. Perhaps a bit too much interpretation, still, that's how it seems to me.

If this sounds like standard generational change complaining (Back in my day . .), maybe.

If you have more to add, better.

I'm not sure I'm high enough to appreciate what you've written, even if I understand the gist of it?

Haha

I believe Next Gen gamers refer to you as the legacy userbase :D

Same goes for franchise. These are terms used when trying to convince investors to part with their money.

Bots

There is AI, there is CPU. The reason i don't like bots is because:
1.) When I see an abbreviation I think of the full term. And bots should stand for -- robots.
2.) When I used to visit a friend in RL, his little brother used to call everyone in Counter-Strike ''bots''.
I don't like Counter-Strike with a passion. It is overrated as an MP game and the community... oh god... the community!
Hearing ''bots'' in RL, in a game that I despised was cringe.

Controller

CONTROL WHAT ?!?!
There's Joysticks and there are gamepads!!!

Dishonorable grumpy mention - #Hashtags

Hashtags used to denote what channel you should join on IRC. That it was on QuakeNet's network was a given.
That is not what hashtags are used for anymore.

Very much agree with you on all points, but especially the last about "IP". Like with most things in the media sphere, I need to "translate" it to more sober terms, which here might be "source material" or "universe" or something along those lines.

"legacy userbase" Well done. I shall choose to receive this as a compliment for esoteric complexity, rather than a critique seeking simpler, shorter statement of the ideas.

It's funny because I've been thinking that the term Next Gen has really lost its meaning, or just how it should never have found its way to the gaming industry in the first place. It's just that the term has been thrown around a lot and often used to market games in the end turns out to be a meh. Even if we were to live in a different universe where those games didn't flop, the usage of the term will eventually die out, as I can't see how much further can adding better graphics or features into a game or how much can the advent of better technology push the gaming industry further. I mean Unreal Engine 5 already looks gorgeous. And if Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man's Sky had delivered everything that their developers had promised during their launch, how much more next gen can games after those two be.

Or sometimes the lack of terminology, ie, naming sequels to originals exactly the same name with no "2" or "3" or year after it...

Do you have an example?
They do that with "reboots"/remakes, I've never seen it with sequels.

I usually hate reboots. They seem to be made by people that hate the original (but still want to make money out of it).

Well I meant to include remasters / remakes, etc. Eg, System Shock ("Coming Soon..."), Prey (I played that back in 2006...), " DOOM" (ah yes, a fine 1993 title...) The only breath of sanity for this stuff is that PCGamingWiki ignore the "official" name selected by the publishers (as stores list them) and add the year anyway.

Completely agree!

The term "IP" has another issue: it can refer to copyrights, patents, and/or trademarks. The problem is that these three things are *different*, and the laws behind each of them, how you get them, how long they last, and what is considered a violation are completely different; hence, lumping them together can confuse things. (IANAL, however.)

As for others:

"grinding": I don't like this term for a few reasons:
* When it comes to RPGs, there's been the term "leveling up", which has been around much longer, and which serves the purpose well. ("leveling up" can even be applied to games without XP-based leveling like the SaGa games.)
* The term feels like it has a negative connotation, and sometimes I just like to play a game where I can just wander in circles, killing enemies, watching numbers change (and, in particular, XP increasing), and gaining levels once in a while. (I actually prefer the original Dragon Quest to its remakes for this reason; the remakes increased XP/gold gains so much that they are much shorter than the original.)

"RPG", in its current common usage, mainly because the term has become diluted to the point of being useless. There's a good reason why I've chosen to adopt a strict definition of the term, explicitly excluding action games with RPG elements like the Ys series. (Also, note that this is not a judgement of the quality of the game; the Ys games are quite good (if you're into action games), while there are some games I count as RPGs that are terrible (like the NES version of Ultima 5).)

Also don't like the term "mob" to refer to a single enemy, as to me, that term implies multiple enemies.

It happens that I don't like the term "buff" either, particularly since that term came way late compared to things that would be described by it (the KALKI spell in Wizardry 1 is an early example of such a spell, and I believe you could trace it back even further, to something like the Bless spell from early D&D).


Just remembered another thing I don't like, and that's the numbering of console generations. There are a few issues here:
* The NES is not a descendant of the Atari, or of any other Atari-era console. From what I can tell, the game console industry essentially died out at that point in time, and was then revived, by a different company, in a different country, and with different design philosophies and policies. As a result, the ancestry chain is essentially broken at that point.
* There are some consoles that were essentially released between generations, like the Dreamcast. Where do you place those?
* Also, this might not work so well when you look at handhelds, since their releases often don't conincide. I note that the Game Boy didn't get a successor until the Nintendo 64 era IIRC, and that, much of videogame history, there wasn't any effective competition, with the PSP being the only possibly effective competitor to a Nintendo handheld. (The Game Gear had issues, like battery life, keeping it from becoming popular, even with color, while the WonderSwan Color, even with some ports of Squaresoft games for the platform, didn't even do well enough to leave Japan.)
* Where do you put the Virtual Boy? (Nintendo's only failed video game system.)

Boomer shooter. The whole "boomer/zoomer" thing has been idiotic from the start. I guess it's too hard to say "old-school".

Controller game. There is no such thing unless the game actually physically does not support any other input device. Kind of tired of people acting like a deer in a headlight for not playing any 2D platformer or Dark Souls clone on a controller. Haven't yet encountered a game that could not be played on a keyboard/mouse.

When a dev/publisher says "coming out on PC", but really means just Steam.

Updated for "modern audience". At least it makes it easy to tell what to avoid like the plague. Also relevant for shows/movies.

Oh yes this. Absolutely this. How could I forget? I have no idea where this fad originated from (my guess would be some MMO) but I roll my eyes every time I hear somebody refer to a single enemy as a "mob".

Thing is that male protagonists are so common that they are seen as the default, and as a result it doesn't make sense to have a "male protagonist" tag. On the other hand, female protagonists are much rarer, so the "female protagonist" tag is more meaningful.

This can sometimes be true of remakes, as well, particularly if the remake makes significant changes. (For example, the Dragon Quest 3 remake adds an entire personality system that wasn't in the original, along with a starting questionnaire, along the lines of Ultima 4's intro but more complex.)

That then leads to the confusing situation of Donkey Kong 94, which is *not* a sequel to Donkey Kong 64, but rather is a game that actually came out earlier, and is completely different. (DK64's gameplay would not have been possible on the system that DK94 was released for.)