Esports Terminology 2024

Console

The console is one of the most important esports terms for video game players. It refers to a device that is used to play online video games. Players use a console instead of a computer, smartphone or tablet. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are the most popular consoles in the world of electronic sports.

Co-op

Co-op are two or more individuals that are able to play the same video game on the same system as long as each one of them has an extra controller. Also, co-op is possible through multiplayer gaming via online compatibility depending on the system link or the game as long as the players are accessing and playing the same game.

DLC

DLC is a short form of downloadable content. The downloadable content includes additional items, levels, expansions, rewards and quests. Since all these are just add-ons to an already existing game, they’ll, in most cases, come with an extra cost.

Fighting Games

Fighting games are 1v1 violent, combat-based video games. They are similar to boxing matches where players control fighters, and they try to knock their competitors out using special moves and various combinations. Tekken and Streetfighter are the most popular franchises.

Fighting Game Community

Abbreviated as FGC, fighting game community is an umbrella term that covers everyone who is interested in any of the fighting games. The phrase is in most cases used in popular games such as Streetfighter or Tekken.

F2P

The F2P stands for the ‘free-to-play’ term. Instead of making cash on upfront purchases, the game providers offer the entire games free of charge with optional in-game purchases that enhances to the entire gaming experience.

First Person Shooter

The short form of the first-person shooter is FPS. First-person shooters are online combat-based games that are played from the first-person perspective. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Overwatch and Call of Duty are the popular FPS titles available online.

Freemium

A fermium is an online video game that is available free of charge for players. However, they require payment to unlock the different maps and levels available.

Game Makers

Game makers are software companies that design, build and distribute games to online gaming sites and players.

Good Game

Good game is abbreviated as GG. It’s used at the conclusion of a game to acknowledge that a given game is well played and contested from the two competitors of teams.

Jersey

Similar to other sports, a jersey in esports means a t-shirt that a team wears at an event. In most cases, it includes organisation logos and contains sponsors.

In-Game Monetisation

This’s the process of increasing revenue or profits in a game after its initial purchase. A range of methods can be used to achieve this, including battle passes, sales of skins and loot boxes.

Meta

Meta is a common word in the esports gaming world. It refers to dominant strategies, champions/heroes, card combinations and builds in multiplayer video games. In most cases, the Meta changes when game makers provide in-game patches and updates.

LAN

An abbreviation for Local Area Network, LAN is a popular and common host for all electronic tournaments and competitions.

Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game

Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is abbreviated as MMORPG and MMO. It is an evolution of the traditional RPG. In this type of gaming, gamers immerse themselves in the roles of characters. The difference between RPG and MMORPG is the virtual interactive component where players share a persistent online world with a massive number of other gamers. The game niche tends to include a PvP element as well as co-operative questing. Popular titles include Guildwars and World of Warcraft.

Microtransactions

These are minor-in game purchases that enhance the cosmetics or the gameplay of a given game.

Online Collectible Card Game

Online collectible card game is abbreviated as OCCG. In these types of games, players trade, collect and battle using a massive range of card combinations and strategies. Magic Online and Hearthstone are popular titles.

Multiplayer Online Battle Arena

MOBA is the short form for a multiplayer online battle arena. A MOBA is a singular map action game that consists of a 2v2, 3v3 or 5v5. The game is fast-paced as well as team-oriented, and each player in a team plays a specific role.

Destroying an enemy before it destroys you is the main objective of multiplayer online battle arena games. Dota 2, Smite and League of Legends are the best examples of MOBA titles.

Non-Endemic Brands

These are brands that aren’t traditional to the electronic sports space. For instance, McDonalds is non-endemic while Acer is an Endemic brand.

Nerf

This is the in-game reconfiguration of item, character or ability to make the game less powerful.

OP

In online gaming, OP is simply overpowered, a word that is used to describe a character, ability or item that is considered too powerful or unbalanced.

A Panel

A panel is a group of experts that discuss various aspects of an electronic sports game.

PvP

A PvP is an abbreviation for player vs player. It refers to an electronic game that has an element of players competing against others on an online gaming platform.

An Esports Tournament

Esports tournaments are competitions that online gaming platforms offer to allow gamers to compete against other players. In most cases, the tournaments come with some goodies that range from real money to virtual prizes. Many gaming platforms offer free-entry tournaments, while others require players to deposit a given amount of money in order to take part in the tournaments.

Patch

A patch is a set of changes that game developers make to enhance, fix or balance gameplay in a particular game after its release.

Twitch

This is one of the most popular video game streaming platforms for players. The content available on these streaming platforms includes both professional esports events and amateur streamers.

Streamer

Streamers play games and share their screens online so that others can view them live when playing. YouTube, Facebook and Twitch are the most popular streaming sites.

Team

A team is a group of professional video game players that play together in an electronic sports match.

Split

The term Split is more common in a competitive season. It refers to a specific section of the electronic sports gaming season. A very competitive season is normally divided into various splits, each with their regular playoffs and season.

Real-Time Strategy

Real-time strategy is shortened as RTS. In RTS games, players manage and control their armies rather than the singular characters. Real-time strategy games are in most cases played from the birds’ eyes view, enabling players to complete the oversight of the units, buildings and terrain that they control. Many RTS games, including Warcraft 3 and StarCraft, are war-based.

Skins

These are in-game cosmetic items that are used to change the appearances of the character that players are playing.

Role-Playing Games

These are single-player games in which gamers immerse themselves in the role of single characters. The most popular are adventure-style games that include elements of character progression. Witcher, Skyrim and Fallout are popular franchises.

KDA

KDA is an acronym that represents the performance of players by the number of kills, assists and deaths taken. It is often represented as a ratio, which is calculated by dividing the total number of kills by the total number of deaths. If you have scored a total of twenty kills and died ten times, your KDA will be 2.0.

Carry

When a great performance of a player balances out of the bad performance of the team, when other players do not pull the weight, a player with the best performance can carry the entire team to victory.

Assist

Although there’re some aspects of particular video games that can be considered as assists, it’s universally used to describe the player who is dealing damage to an enemy who the teammate then kills. It can take place over a given amount of time, depending on the type of the game.

For example, if you land some hits on your competitor and then move away for a given period, you will get an assist when your teammate kills them. In most games, restoring full health negates the assist since the damage dealt is normally reversed.

Gank

More than double-teaming, this’s when multiple gamers attack one opponent who is alone. Gank is an important esports slang to keep in mind since all that survive the attack on their own without being helped by others or retreating or kill the attackers show lots of skill.

Rush or Sometimes Push

This is an advancement in play, where multiple players in a team work together to overcome the same area and be able to drive back the opponents.

Perks

In electronic sports, perks are certain characteristics that players have. For instance, in the Call of Duty game, the Ghost perk frees the player from detection.

Deny

When a certain opponent tries to accomplish something, and you counter-act, cancelling the entire action, then that is to deny. If your opponent sees a power-up that they want, and you get to it before them, then it means that you have denied them.

Spam

Spam refers to repeatedly using an ability or a move in a quick succession with no deviation. A good example can be a player that uses Move Q would be called a Q-spammer.

Auto Attack

This is a type of an offensive move set that enables players to attack their opponents endlessly without any manual input. All this is at the cost of effectiveness or damage.

Aimbot

An aimbot is a hacking software or cheatware that aims for the players. An unfortunate truth that still sometimes sneaks its way into different competitive electronic sports games to these days which is met with a swift disqualification.

Casting

Within electronic sports games, casting is used to describe the moment when a player is using an attack, ability or moveset that needs a certain period to execute. In the esports space, it’s an alternative phrase for the commentators of the electronic game in question.

Farm/Farming

In esports, this is the act of counterbalancing easy-to-kill game enemies to get virtual currency in a quick manner to use in-game for better items, powers and abilities. Sometimes, farming is known as grinding.

Fog of War

This is a video game mechanic that is used to limit the array of vision that players and their respective teams have of the opponents’ side of the game until they’re in the vicinity.

Bracket Reset

A bracket reset is a term found in the double-elimination tournaments final round. The winners’ bracket competitor hasn’t lost a game yet. On the other hand, the losers’ bracket competitor has lost a game. In case the losers’ bracket competitor wins, it reads the bracket so that all competitors have lost the game. At this point, the next winner takes everything.

Comps/Composition

A composition means a combination of all the elements of a team. Also, it can be a strategy that a given game or team employs with how it takes the field. Running 2 Tanks, 2 Healers in Overwatch, and 2DPS are perfect examples of composition. A perfect sports analogy would be the line-up of formation in football.

Ladders

Ladders refer to the ranking of players who play online video games. Many video games rank their players based on losses or wins as well as other statistics. Climbing the ladder means that you are becoming better ranked.

Map

A map is where the online video game occurs. Some electronic sports have multiple maps that need different strategies. A map represents the traditional court field or a sports pitch.

Drake

In electronic sports, a drake is the same as a dragon. It is a massive neutral enemy on the game map that can be fought by any team. Drakes brood as one of the four min game elements, and they provide the winning team with a buff based on the elements they are.

Aggro

In video games with PC-controlled non-player characters (NPCs), aggro refers to the levels of fierceness in attacking gamer characters. If players say that they have aggro, they usually mean that one of the non-player characters focuses the attacks on them.

Ace

In a team 5v5 first-person shooter, an ace refers to the moment where one gamer kills all of the opponents once in around.

Anchor

An anchor is either a tank defensive gamer who has the main role of protecting a given space in the game or a bad player who is bringing down the whole team. The use of this term is highly context-sensitive.

BR

This is another context-sensitive term. BR is an abbreviation for a battle royale. The genre is based on the novel/film of the same title and allows lots of players to compete in order to be the last standing on the map. The most popular example of the battle royal games is Fortnite.

Diving

In MOBAs, an early attack on the enemy’s territory is known as a dive. Players usually dive to take out a tower in a video game. The player who dives expects to take a massive amount of damage. Usually, doing this at a point where such an assault is not yet considered as prudent.

Last Hit

In MOBAs, gold and experience earned from an opposing team or a creep member are provided entirely to the individual who strikes the fatal blow. It plays into the entire team strategy of focusing its resources on growing certain characters.

RWS

This is a short form for round win share. Just like DKR and ADS, this’s a metric that is used to value the performance of individual players in a match. For example, in the CS: GO game, round win share is only provided to the winning players and teams, and it is based on the individual gamer damage share of the total damage of a team.

Feeding

Feeding is where a character in a game repeatedly dies to the same team or enemy. This, in most cases, leads to the enemy being more powerful than other players in the video game. And this can lead to them being labelled as fed.

FF

FF stands for finish fast. It is a way of telling other players that it is the right time for you to finish the game. It can also be used as a way of accepting defeat by asking your opponents to finish the game fast.

Gold Advantage

The gold advantage is commonly used to indicate the team that has the most gold in a match. Caters refer to this after objectives or team fights to provide the viewers with an idea of how essential they were. In some video games, players can spend the gold on purchasing new powers or items.

Poke/Harass

A poke or harass is a strategy that involves staying at a given range and dealing small damages to your enemies over time, forcing all of them into a disadvantage.

Juke

When you trick your competitor to either move or attack in any direction away from yourself, then that is juking. Also, it can be used to describe baiting a person into a move or an attack that misses massively.

Inting

This is a short form of intentional. Inting is used when someone is intentionally feeding the enemies. Also, it can be used when somebody is intentionally trying to lose the match.

Jungler

A jungler is a person who primarily focuses on attacking the neutral NPCs while at the same time providing much-needed support for their team. On the other hand, jungling is the process of clearing a given area of NPCs while ganking the enemies.

Laning

Used in MOBA games, laning describes the act of moving down a certain lane to push, farm or engage with the opponents. It is usually in the middle and early portions of the match where characters are primarily focused on gaining experience or gold for later on in the gaming process.

Objective

An objective refers to certain targets or goals in a match which offer an advantage to the team, such as a tower to destroy, a destination or a huge neutral monster that provides either a buff or any other benefits to the team.

QQ

QQ means either go cry or go quit. For example, on the Blizzard’s Battlement gaming platform, you could click Alt+q+q to exit. This’s normally utilised as an insult against angry gamers. It is commonly confused with a pair of crying eyes.

Rotation

In the definition of esport, you are likely to come across the term rotation. In electronic sports games, rotation refers to the movement of a team from one area to another on the map. Also, it can be used as the optimal order where abilities should be utilised.

RNG

This is short for random number generation. RNG is used when a video game has an element of randomness. Hearthstone is a perfect example.

Stack

A stack is a group of individuals playing together. It can also be the act of keeping units or a team close together to hide from the opponent. A stack can also be used to describe a certain effect stacking multiple times. For instance, if a given item proc increases the attacking speed by two per cent and can stack perfectly, after five stacks, your attacking speed will be increased by ten per cent.

Zoning

When your character in a game utilises aggressive tactics to force the other players to leave an area on the map, that is zoning. Normally, this’s used to provide you with an advantage by holding more safe areas.

Peel

Peeling is a process that involves aiming to save any of your teammates. This’s normally done when a character in a game stops fighting their current targets and instead utilises their abilities to help other players or simply their teammates.

Final Thoughts

These are the most common terms and abbreviations that you will find in any top gaming terminology dictionary. Understanding all of these terms is important, especially when you love playing and placing bets on electronic sports.