Bosses, spam, and griefers: a study of how old words adopt new meanings in online computer games

Författare

Mikael Johannesson

Summary, in English

This essay investigates 20 gaming words generally present in the genres of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, Real Time Strategy, and First-Person Shooter. From each genre, one game was chosen as a representative for their respective genre, namely Guild Wars 2, StarCraft II, and Quake III Arena. The 20 words were chosen on the basis that they all occur in at least two of the three gaming genres, and that their use in the games differ from their original definition presented in Oxford English Dictionary. The aim of the study is to investigate how online multiplayer games adopt certain words and how they are used in their respective contexts. My hypothesis was that there would be differences in meanings of the words within the different games since the games, in themselves, are different from each other. However, only 8 of the 20 analysed words differed in use between the games, which does not fully support this initial hypothesis. The reasons for this are, according to this study, mainly twofold. The sample size is limited, thus making it difficult to draw any major conclusions. Moreover, gamers move between games, bringing acquired vocabulary with them. In this study, only verbs and nouns were adopted in the different genres, and they had changed from their definitions present in the Oxford English Dictionary mainly through widening and/or conversion.

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