Secret words only videogame developers use

[gsokol]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6504/a_game_studio_culture_dictionary.php?page=1

Stumbled across this this morning. Pretty entertaining article.

Glad to know there is a term for the guys that go to the bathroom with their shoes off.

[TeriyakiStyle]

I remember hearing, and even saying "low hanging fruit" a lot when referring to doing something easy first.

It's interesting, terms are infectious and if the right one is used in a group it spreads quickly.

[ErichWK]

Oh man these are great. I remember at my last job we used the term "Dude-Bro Shooters" a bunch to describe tough guy, burly, muscle douchey shooters.

[Mcejn]

Levels that shit.

Cool list. :)

[d1ver]

Pretty good list!
The Yoda Conditional was hilarious:)

also the 80/20 is actually the Pareto principle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

[Sean VanGorder]

"Stockholm Syndrome: Usually refers to junior developers who are loving this hardcore crunch-laden life that is being imposed upon them because suffering gives meaning to their existence."

Hahaha


I love articles like this. Thanks for sharing.

[Stradigos]

"Stockholm Syndrome: Usually refers to junior developers who are loving this hardcore crunch-laden life that is being imposed upon them because suffering gives meaning to their existence."

LOL, brilliant.

[Darth Tomi]

Ha ha. Funny.

[xvampire]

Ninja Commit : rapidly send something to svn without checking his stuff works or not. or secretly send an update at the time sending something to svn is not allowed.

[Justin Meisse]

after working with Gamebryo for a long time you start referring to meshes as NIFs - it took me a few months to unlearn that only to go to another gamebryo studio afterwords.

[Habboi]

I'm having a hard time getting used to pronouncing decals "decows" as I used to call them deck ales. Some of these are funny though.

[danr]

Plenty of these

CTC - Constant Taxi Cunt. Refers more to the morning than the evening, which is all the more dissapointing

Max Mong : that person whose skill, confidence and general aptitude to 3d art does not reflect into a wider social sphere and prevent them being a, well, total mong. Quite common actually. Also, Script Flid.

[Frankie]

I've got a word. Your working away then someone like a boss, producer, publisher or gamedesigner comes up with a stupid idea that wont add anything to the game and probably make you stay late and you just want them to shut up and go away. It's called a

Fequal

FEature for the seQUEL

it also sounds like fecal.

[Kwramm]

vertical slice - if you want to be taken serious in games, use this word a lot! seriously, managers, producers, etc. who're not in the games industry have no idea what this is supposed to be.

feature creep.

I guess those two words just have been waaaay over used in my last studio where the PMs made sure to jump on every buzzword bandwagon. Anyhow, those two still make my ears bleed. Common English please - let's keep it simple. thanks!

[hawken]

I have heard most of these during my years of meetings, the one I never really got or liked was "High Level brief" or High Level description. It's used to mean initial brief with low to no detail or substance. Why is it so high? Do you slowly work your way down to the shit low level at the end where everything is complicated and over detailed?

Maybe it's used so managers can glide from one project to the next, staying "high" up in the air so they don't feel bad about not actually giving a toss how the project is made?

[Bad Spleen]

Wonkify: to add imperfection to geometry to break the perfect symmetry and "straightness" of 3D. Wonkifying something gives it personality. It can be as subtle as slightly rotating/scaling a couple of edge loops to break the rigidity of a silhouette.

Not only an artists term, but also a description that only an artist could understand. How many typical readers of Gamasutra understand the term 'edge loop'?

[Joshua Stubbles]

Wonkify! I've been saying that for yeaaaars. Same with Greeble. Never heard of using TARDIS in that manner though, or Fakosity.

[Jackablade]

Gamma Correction: A banned render setting that cannot so much as be mentioned in the building without incurring the wrath of the director and probably resulting in being fired. Really.

That was certainly an interesting studio to work at. I should be able to dig up a few more choice terms from those couple of tumultuous months.

[Justin Meisse]

I have heard most of these during my years of meetings, the one I never really got or liked was "High Level brief" or High Level description. It's used to mean initial brief with low to no detail or substance. Why is it so high? Do you slowly work your way down to the shit low level at the end where everything is complicated and over detailed?

Maybe it's used so managers can glide from one project to the next, staying "high" up in the air so they don't feel bad about not actually giving a toss how the project is made?

Might be related to programming language terms - high level is the abstracted easy for humans language while low level is assembly.

I don't have a problem with Vertical Slice, is there another way to describe the process in two words or less?

[Shogun3d]

Vertical Slice

[achillesian]

Dicktank

[MattQ86]

I would like to make a case for the use of "Gormley"...

Little Wings - Mark Gormley - YouTube

...to describe game art that looks (http://www.jackals-forge.com/abom.html)socially awkward.

[Synthesizer]

I don't have a problem with Vertical Slice, is there another way to describe the process in two words or less?

Some studios call it a "core experience" or "core x". Maybe that's better?


Ninja Commit : rapidly send something to svn without checking his stuff works or not. or secretly send an update at the time sending something to svn is not allowed.
This one's great, I've done it/used this word quite a number of times :)

[Kwramm]

Some studios call it a "core experience" or "core x". Maybe that's better?

I suddenly came to like the term vertical slice much much more!

Also what's core experience gotta do with vertical slice? I was under the impression a vertical slice is a milestone wrapping up the game at the current stage in a playable/presentable form.... kinda like where you slice vertically though all the tasks in your long MS project task list and get the status quo presentable...ah well crap. I still hate the term.

Too many people using it with too few knowing what it exactly is. Having a industry lingo is only useful as long as everyone has the same thing in mind when using it.

[Jackablade]

A Vertical Slice is a playable chunk of the game that at least attempts to be indicative of what the final game will be like. The one's I've done in the past usually involve getting one level with all the assets pretty well polished and all of the games systems up and running.

Dicktank
No no, Penis Tank. Dicktank is just uncouth.

[Kwramm]

so it's a prototype? ;)

although in my old company we had a couple of vertical slices. Each of them produced a (supposedly?) playable game version with the currently implemented features. It wasn't like a prototype, proof of concept or anything like that. It wasn't polished either :/ It was more like a "finish all current tasks, don't start a new one, and see if we can play it" sort of thing. Supposedly it was intended to give an impression of the final product, but it never did, thanks to designers & co changing their minds every once and so often. In fact it was just some sort of milestone, but that doesn't sound nearly half as cool.

[arrangemonk]

vertical slice is not gamer related,
every pimp ass software engineer uses that word for prototype or "proof of concept"

[gsokol]

Whenever I heard the term vertical slice being thrown around, it referred to the idea of taking a small portion of the game, and developing it to "100%" completion. So instead of working on a bunch of features and it all coming together at the end, you focus on making 1 small part of the game feel complete. That way when you go to publishers/clients/investors/whatever you can have something to show that is a fair reflection on where the game should be when its complete.

[Malus]

"Putting grandma out on the porch."
or
"Put it on the porch with grandma."
"On the porch."
"Porch it."
...etc

Refers to features which you have to be put aside because of time/staffing/financial constraints. Normally things which aren't integral to shipping but would push the quality up.

Generally used close to milestone deliveries (especially alpha).

If they survive it was meant to be....sort of like grandma. :P

[GarageBay9]

My favorite came from a track lead at Turn 10 - anything that was completely fucked up, built in a way that made editing it or bugfixing it a pain in the ass, or was otherwise a miserable asset to work on, was "not awesome."

[Tulkamir]

On vertical slice / prototype, I actually think that they are used fairly differently in practice.

Prototyping generally means quickly bashing out some specific part of the game/feature in order to test whether or not it would work if brought to a finished state, to test for issues that may arise, etc...

Vertical Slice is generally a full chunk of the actual game that is chosen to have a great amount of emphasis in early production in order to bring it to a near finished state early on. This is so that the team can have a better idea of what it would take to produce the game, to set quality standards and goals, to show off to exec types, etc...

So yeah, while technically a Vertical slice is a prototype, it is definitely worth having a separate word to describe what it is, as it's a very specific type of prototype. :)

Also, that whole list is awesome. Another buzz word type thing I see thrown around a lot is "win". As in "We gotta put that feature in, it'll be a major win!".

[Rhinokey]

i like to refer to the huge groups of people that get up and wander around usualy like a mob leaving for lunch at the same time as either

the Buffoon Platoon or Slob Mob

sometimes when me and my group of classy gentlemen lunchers are walking to the culinary school next door we pass a group of unwashed bioware cretins, and i say in a clever way
"here comes the buffoon platoon"
and my party of gents give a chuckle!