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In her latest column Jessica Mulligan this time writes something up on the terminology used for online games. By the time Shakespeare was getting an education at Stratford-on-Avon around 1577, the middle class was educating itself to take advantage of all the new books created by the printing press, and this brought on a huge interest in language and words. There was much that was new and needed a word that described it, so they started making them up as the need arose. Shakespeare alone added a couple thousand words, not to mention hundreds of catch-phrases we still use today ("flesh and blood," "vanish into thin air" and "in one fell swoop" are examples).
So here we are on the forefront of the Information Age, and we’re in much the same position Will and his pals of the Renaissance were in; different people have different definitions for some commonly-used terms. Just what is an ‘online game,’ for example? Is a massively-multiplayer game also a persistent world? We could really use a set of clearly defined and commonly agreed-to terms, so that at least we all know what the heck the other person means when he says "MMOG" or "online game" or "hybrid." That means defining the acronyms, too; they are getting ‘way out of hand. Who wants to use "MMORPG" in a conversation? Acronyms are supposed to be compact and save significant time, not make someone sound like they’re speaking Klingon. She concludes with her own first version of a glossary, you can find right here. |
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