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Forum Life "The language of a gamer"
DuraheLL
Member Posts: 2,951
NOTE: This is an extra project I decided to do at school, just thought I'd share it here with ya all.
This is an extra work made to enlighten, teach and sort out many misconceptions concerning that people who does nothing but play computer games learns nothing. Why would I make a project like this? Because I find it very unique and modern, and it’s nothing that you can learn in school, the language of a gamer.
Please do not misunderstand, I’m not trying to point out that doing nothing but playing games all your days makes you just as smart as being well educated at school or at work and etcetera, but it definitely gives you something.
The internet, a humongous technique and technology when it was invented and brought out on the market as a very public household item. Information could now be stored and reached at incredibly short distances! Sharing information and learning information became plain easy world-wide. It connected the world in very many unique ways.
All this speedup has had entire revamps of our languages too. While exploring the internet there are never ending amounts of text, to be able to reach it faster and smoother something was needed, that something was language shortenings.
This kind of language if very unique and has its own kind of people speaking it, these could be people working with digital computer technology or the more “simple” people, the gamers (description of a person playing computer/video games as a hobby).
When working with computer language the shortenings are needed because otherwise it would take too much time when programming because you would have to write and go through so much text, when gaming, the shortenings are needed because everything happens so fast. You have to be fast with commands and actions, everything that happens faster in games is better.
How might a conversation in an online game sound like? Here’s an example:
PersonA: Tank LFG 4 WC!
PersonB: GLFM Tank plz no noobs!
PersonA: Inv me plz I’m lvl 20.
PersonB: K lol wth 2 low m8.
PersonA: K thnx bye.
What?! You might think, but this is actually very much how it can sound like in a game. And people comprehend like this much of the time online as well. To save time and space people use numbers, saying 2 is faster than typing “to” as in “I want to go to PersonA”.
Ridiculous you might think? Oh yes so we all thought when we saw this kind of language, but after a while you suddenly get used to it and it becomes a part of your gaming. Online gamers have what could be called a language of their own when speaking about the subject.
But looking how it looks elsewhere it isn’t really much of a difference, a person not interested in … let’s say horseback riding might be clueless about a conversation between two horseback riding hobbyists.
What’s so special about all this then? Well I will go on about my experience when it comes to the English language and how I have experienced it in a more casual kind of way. The modern everyday version of the English language among younger people.
I promise you, when playing an online game (A game of which you play with people from all around the world, you interact and adventure together over the internet) you will experience A LOT of different English language. There is a lot of skill to be able to comprehend properly, since you will meet a lot of people who doesn’t know that much English, so your part will be to try to find a way of which you two can comprehend easily. You will be forced to try to simple the English as much as possible, which I find interesting. It will also be an experience when you meet people which are really good with the English, then instead of trying to simplify the language you will try to advance it.
It’s all actually splendid ways of learning and advancing your English skills! Your casual English will be boosted and you will be able to learn the modern English teenagers speak with each other, so you get more “up-to-date” than you would get from learning English in school for an example.
Ok so when I play, I learn English this kind of way, but that’s not just it, there is one more way that I find even better. Online games have “forums”, which are enormous chat-rooms on the internet where you and your fellow online gamers gather up to discuss about the game of which you are playing. The experience in the forums differs really much from the experience in the game itself, language-wise that is.
In forums you can communicate with developers (the people who are behind the games and that created them) about all kinds of stuff, future add-ons to the game and much more. You can also try to change things you do not like about the game by expressing yourself and stating what you are disappointed about in a constructive way. If you manage to get many people who agrees with you there could be a chance that the developers reads it and then decides to give the players what they want.
Here we can find TONS of skills. When you have an opinion you must know how to deliver it to the other players in a very constructive way, you have tons of stuff to think about before expressing yourself, if you miss out on one single point, or forget to see the change as a whole and every tiny thing it might change, people are going to bury you in disagreements.
You have to be 100% clear about what you have to say, this requires a lot of researching as well. That improves your way of standing on your own legs looking after yourself. No matter what you will always have someone disagreeing with you and they your comprehensive skills are put to test when you will have to word-down your opponent. Your opinion SHALL win.
I – myself – have had a lot of experience in forums, you learn how to handle people in mature ways and not just “wipe them away”. You must be ready to confront any type of people in the right ways, even those who treats you unfairly and calls you inappropriate things.
To get anywhere with your opinions you should also be prepared to write a lot of text, it could be hundreds of responds to your thread and then people often expect you to respond to them, otherwise your opinion would seem to lack meaning right? Who would agree with someone who cannot even stand for his opinions?
Ok so this improves your English, text wise, but how about the vocal bit? Yes, gaming can also improve that. When people get together and play online games it often happens that they talk to each other live. How’s that you might ask? If one person sits at the other side of the globe? Well it’s really simple, there are voice communicating programs that you can download for your computer, then all you need is a microphone and a sound device to be able to get others to hear your voice and you to hear theirs. It’s a superb way of learning how to speak English more smoothly.
Yes, this is how it looks like to many people today, gaming has become something much more social than it perhaps was before. You seldom play games alone today on your computer, and often have people with you when doing so. For educational purposes I can only see a increase of skills, I don’t know how much more people’s English skills has risen in grades in percentages by today, but I’m sure they have and that this kind of English confronting is the reason behind much of it.
$OE lies list
http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0
"
And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
Comments
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
Hah!
$OE lies list
http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0
"
And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
Good essay. However there are a few points on which I dissagree.
First being that a lot of these language terms are game specific. For example if you say LFG WC (definately an EQ2 player Wailing Caves FTW!) an EVE online player has no need for such a message.
The second thing is that games can do two things: either increase the level of social activity (Roleplaying on EQ2...) or force it to be reduced (Use of acronyms) for the sake of not spending time typing insdeat of playing.
Or ... maby THIS happends
http://noob.istheshit.net/
$OE lies list
http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0
"
And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
i aint gonna make this long:
DON'T SPEND 12 HOURS A DAY PLAYING GAMES
the only thing you learn doing that crap one year long
is to think you really are some cool, silent , strong , smart one of a kind.
But when you finally decide to get you square-a** out of your room-and decide to compare yourself to the ones that have really done something like : gain life experience and info- you'll stand there like the snot nosed trutle head that you are ...
shortly said ...get a life , and let this be a HOBBY
just looking for trouble
..anyone got a problem with that..?
$OE lies list
http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0
"
And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
It isn't abberviation. It is reducing words down to phonetic components. In City of Heroes / villians people say "mish" instead of mission. "wut" is almost universially used in place of what and "cud: for could.
This is relatively new in gaming. Old school MUD, MOO and MUSH people would never reduce their language down to illiterate nothingness. When text was the entire game and the game was about role playing the ideas wasn't to be lesss descrptive.
http://rarrii.blogspot.com/
It's annoying to me. I can understand if someone is trying to type a text on a phone, where it's a pain to type each letter, that using abbreviated text may be acceptable. It really isn't acceptable when you are clearly using a keyboard to do it: it sounds dumb and dumbed-down.
Id vote: Yes.
In almost 90% of all cases. Persoanly I'm doing all I can to stop typing like that, but you get carried away since you hear it so often
$OE lies list
http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0
"
And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
First let me say, nice essay Dura and kudos especially since English is not your native tongue.
Second, let me state that a certain amount of the abbreviations such as LFG and some of those are necessary and I let them become part of my own lexicon. But folks who intentionally make up nicknames for "mobs" in game, such as "crows" for Rotstuffed Scarecrows in EQ2, come on folks, thats wrong. If you want to nickname, you don't make it into the name of a potential other mob... Call them Rotstuffeds or Witherstraws (2 different type of scarecrows) but just "crows" is vague and doesn't serve the purpose. Sorry, rant off.
As for those who are too danged lazy to actually type, I have to go with you on that... Laziness is no excuse. Using improper wut and cud is just asinine. In particular people who use bastardizations for word that use the SAME NUMBER OF TYPED LETTERS really, really gets my goat. I am alway considerate of those folks who don't speak English, they are not the ones I have an issue with. L33tspeek and uber roxxors,,,, I understand its your way of identifying yourself with the hacker and gamer society, but don't get bent out of shape when people assume you are an illiterate 5th grader who got ahold of your moms' credit card. And do not get me started on folks who cannot understand proper punctuation marks. ROFL and all that, grin. Anyway, good topic, could be a college thesis one day. Good luck and good gaming. Cheers!
Bringing Chaos to your locale.
This is something I was thinking about recently.
Proper spelling and innunciation aside. I find it interesting that up until this point in history all human languages evolved phonetically, that is to say, humans spoke to each other via sound language and then later on figured out how to write it down. On the internet however, you have all these subcultures evolving new, symbolic language, which is to say you have these words expressed not on how they sound but on how they look like on a monitor. Some are simple phonetic substitutions; hate = h8. Some are more subtle, like roflcoptor = the visual image of someone rolling / spinning opn the ground in laughter. There was no word that described that before the internet. Or what about l33T = a word expressed thru pure symbolism. This may all seem extremely obvious to us, but when you think about it 10 years ago none of this existed at all. If you get a teenager from 1996 and stick him in WOW or a chat room, he'd have no idea what was going on.
Being a gamer, these are all gamer symbolisms. I can only wonder what languages other corners of the internet are coming up with. Any w/c way, I think it'll be interesting in a couple of years to see where we end up, as 1.) internet symbolism continues to evolve and 2.) you have an entire generation of kids who grow up in a phonetic AND symbolic language environment.
I don''t really know when Humankind will die out but i''m guessing about 6 years before WOW.
-BarCrow
Rabidaskal:
2.) you have an entire generation of kids who grow up in a phonetic AND symbolic language environment.
Well, many of the famous expressions from in-game has made it out into the real world, expressions like "lol", "rofl" and "wtf". So this might not be that impossible
$OE lies list
http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0
"
And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
Ahh, kids who don't know thier history. Substituting letters for numbers has been around at least since the BBS days (starting in the early 80s), when it was used to talk about warez (another term that dates back more than 20 years) without triggering a sysop's keyword searches. The various forms of elite (1337, 3133+3 |33T, whatever you're writing) have been in use by crackers for a long time, I've got a silly old T-shirt from sometime in the early 90s with a 3133+3 on it.
ROFLCOPTOR specifically is a recent slang word, but ROFL for laughter dates back at least to 1990 (15 years ago), I remember running into good 'ol ROFL and LOL back in the pre-web days when I first got online. None of those are game specific either, they're common to pretty much any typed chat or forums.
If you take a teenager today who doesn't frequent online games and stick him in a WOW chat room, he'll have no idea what's going on. But if you take someome from 1996, or even 1991 who was used to IRC (Internet Relay Chat) or played MUDs/MUCKs/MUSHes, they'd be able to jump right in and sort out the more recent acronyms from context.
The Internet has brought around some global changes that has affected the very world as we know it. Never has the world been so close yet so far away. This is all thanks to the Internet.
The language displayed by gamers is not only utilised by gamers but by a large majority of the online community. Why?
When you delve into an international community which is what the internet consists of, you will come across people from different backgrounds, cultures and societies, all with different experiences and languages. How do you then communicate effectively in an international community?
Simple, you simplify the language to decrease the language barriers.
Over the years, the internet has played host to a new universal language that simplifies the language barrier, allowing everyone to participate in conversation in its most basic form.
"I am going 4 sum food" is an example of how internet language has evolved into its simplistic almost neanderthal persona. But yet its easier to understand than saying "I am going for some food", its also quicker to type.
When you combine this new internet language with internet Jargon, you get the final compilation. Example: AFK, brb got 2 go 2 shop
Over time this language will evolve and may even influence our day to day language, but only time will tell.
"Here we can find TONS of skills."
Lmao, that is language you use in a school project? What are you, 10?
No longer visiting MMORPG.com.
Dear mr. Root Head, keep in mind this ain't a REAL school project either, just an extra project at the side of everything else. And since then why would I chose 100% formality when I'm making a "personal experience" letter to my teacher?
$OE lies list
http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=424&start=0
"
And I don't want to hear anything about "I don't believe in vampires" because *I* don't believe in vampires, but I believe in my own two eyes, and what *I* saw is ******* vampires! "
Dear mr. Root Head, keep in mind this ain't a REAL school project either, just an extra project at the side of everything else. And since then why would I chose 100% formality when I'm making a "personal experience" letter to my teacher?
No longer visiting MMORPG.com.
L2P nub cake
add that to your list
people asking me for help in a game and typing like that wont get a answer from me
- He Who Fears Death Is In Denial, For Death Is Promised. -
I would ignore anyone writing like this in chat:
PersonA: Tank LFG 4 WC!
PersonB: GLFM Tank plz no noobs!
PersonA: Inv me plz Im lvl 20.
PersonB: K lol wth 2 low m8.
PersonA: K thnx bye.
No longer visiting MMORPG.com.
<blockquote><hr><i>Originally posted by achaean</i>
<b>I'm not stupid and what the hell are you looking on my profile for, secondly, gamers do not have their own language, just shortcut words, theres no reason to talk about it, some dude wrote an essay on it, amazing.
</b><hr></blockquote>
Some achaean dude said something totally uninteresting in a thread he'd better stfu in, far from being amazing...
If u have nothing to contribute, why do u waste ur time, 39 year old
go find a boy/girl... there's still time
Plus, if u don't want others to get info from your profile, leave these informations out. lol, the most ridiculous about ur waste of forum space is, that u really asked, why someone checked ur profile. ahaha
Hint : A profile is there for others to get a forum-poster's personal info
@ originator : nice work so far, in fact players do have their own language, some persons just don't get this, cause noone talks to them, if they behave so immature, arrogant and unfriendly, more when they just registered and introduce themselves as being total f*cktards.
but
had a good laugh with the noob.istheshit thingy