Jose Perez – Klass

Some communities I am a part of are the gaming community. The “languages” I had to learn to engage in the gaming discourse communities were words, terms, phrases, and acronyms that only someone from the gaming discourse community would most likely know. I learned these languages by being in the online game community, watching gaming youtubers, watching twitch streamers and playing online multiplayers games. I also learned them by interacting and talking with other gamers. Some popular acronyms from the gaming discourse community are “MVP”, “GG”, and “MMORPG”. These acronyms stand for Most Valuable Player (for the player who did the best play in the game out of all the players), Good Game (as a sign of respect after a game to the fellow player), and Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (is a story driven online game were a player takes a persona of a character and interacts with a large number of other players). Some words or phrases that stick out to me as if helping me feel like I am part of the in-crowd are Lag, Ganking, Toxic, and camping. Lag is when there is a delay in game actions, ganking is when multiple players team up to fight one player something unfairly, toxic is used to describe rude players, and camping is a tactic in a game where a player sits in one advantageous place and does not move. I think learning these “languages” of the gaming discourse community made me not just “feel” like I was part of this discourse community but also made me part of the gaming discourse community. If someone who was not part of the gaming discourse community wanted to get into online gaming they would be very confused by all of the gaming jargon. I think for new gamers to be part of the gaming discourse community they should at least try to learn the jargon so they don’t feel confused and get a sense of community with other gamers.