Does Gen Z talk about you behind your back? Young people have started using video game terms like “NPC” and “sidequests” in their everyday conversations. Do you know what these slang words mean?
From “beef” to “bald,” it’s safe to say that many members of Generation Z have their own language.
Now a Harvard-trained linguist has revealed how Generation Z (born in the late 1990s and early 2000s) has started using video game terms.
Just as previous generations have used sports metaphors as part of everyday language, video games are now becoming part of the way young people understand the world, says Adam Aleksic.
So whether you’re called an NPC, asked ‘where are we dropping?’, or doing side quests, it turns out that Gen Z could be talking about you behind your back.
Luckily, help is available, as we’ve put together a list of some of the most common video game terms – and what they mean in Gen Z’s modern lexicon.
A Harvard-trained linguist has revealed how Generation Z (born in the late 1990s and early 2000s) came to use video game terms (stock image)
Mr. Aleksic, who posts under the name Etymology Nerd, says that Gen Z’s use of video game terms in real life is actually a new kind of etymological category.
In the video, he explains, “It’s kind of like all the sports metaphors we’ve built up over time.”
Terms like “swing and a miss” or “coming out of left field” all have their origins in the game of baseball, but have now taken on a more serious or abstract meaning.
“Now we’re in a whole new game of people with a shared cultural understanding of video games, so we started tapping into that as a way to express our reality,” Mr. Aleksic explains.
This is not a new phenomenon, as our use of gaming metaphors dates back to the 12th and 15th centuries, when the importance of chess was emphasized.
Mr. Aleksic says, “We started using chess terms like ‘pawn’ or ‘gambit’ to describe non-chess situations.”
Even the term “chess” evolved from the literal attack on the king in chess and means “to stop and consider,” as we use it today.
While video game terms may be mainly used by Generation Z today, Mr. Aleksic says they could become much more important in the future.
Grain
If you’ve talked to members of Gen Z or spent much time playing online games, you’ve surely heard someone say the classic refrain: “PLS Nerf.”
Nerf is one of those video game terms that has followed a convoluted path to its ultimate meaning.
The term comes from the Nerf foam darts and swords that became popular in the 1990s.
From there the term appears to make the jump to video games in the 1997 MMORPG Ultima Online.
When the game’s developers released an update that greatly reduced the power of swords, some players complained that it was like using “Nerf swords.”
The term has now spread everywhere and denotes any great diminution of strength, power, capacity or ability.
Someone might call something “nerfed” to indicate that it has been made much worse, or complain that something needs to be “nerfed” for the sake of fairness.
Nerf is also the flip side of the term “buff,” which means making something stronger or generally better.
The term nerf, which means to make weaker or worse, appears to have originated in the 1997 game Ultima Online (pictured), in which players complained that weak weapons felt like using “nerf swords.”
Nerf foam arrows and weapons are so gentle and safe that they have become a synonym for weakness or ineffectiveness in gaming terms
NPC
This is perhaps the most notable example of how a video game term has leaked into real conversations.
The term NPC or non-player character dates back even before the era of computer games to pen and paper role-playing games (RPGs).
One of the earliest known examples of this term can be found in 1974 in the first edition of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson’s Dungeons and Dragons.
There, the term was simply used to describe any character in the story who was controlled by the gamemaster rather than by any of the players.
NPCs were used to flesh out the world and make it feel more alive to the players.
As RPGs became digital, so did NPCs, and computer games became populated by automated characters.
Some NPCs can be extremely advanced these days, but the term as it is colloquially used usually refers to the style of NPC found in games like Skyrim and Oblivion.
In games like Skyrim (pictured), NPCs (non-player characters) awkwardly walk along preset paths while repeating stock phrases
These NPCs generally walked clumsily along preset paths or remained frozen in place for hours repeating bizarre non-sequiturs.
From these clumsy early NPCs, the term has evolved to refer to people who live their lives as if they were on a pre-programmed path rather than thinking for themselves.
In general, someone can be called an NPC because they are boring or because the PC (the player character) lacks spontaneity.
For an equivalent term, you might think of descriptions like “drone,” which is used for someone just going through the motions of life.
It can also imply a level of insignificance, because NPCs, while they can be a big part of the game, are never really as important as the players.
Side issue
Another term that comes from the RPG tradition is ‘sidequest’.
As the name suggests, this refers to any quest or mission that is not part of the main story or objective.
In games like The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, or Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, these quests can actually amount to dozens of hours of gameplay.
The importance of sidequests also ranges from mundane tasks like helping someone find a missing pot to massive quests of truly epic proportions.
In games like The Witcher 3, a large portion of the game is spent doing things that don’t contribute to the main story. The term sidequest now means that you perform unrelated but fun tasks that don’t contribute to your main goals
Because of this, the term sidequests has come to mean all types of tasks, hobbies or pursuits associated with life’s most important ‘quests’.
For example, someone who will be doing a lot of new activities over the weekend might describe themselves as doing sidequests.
In pop culture, the term is also often used to describe people who have been very successful in one field and then suddenly branch out in unrelated ways.
For example, Snoop Dogg could be said to do sidequests with his appearances on cooking shows, nature documentaries, and even in WWE.
Where do we fall?
While other terms often come from gaming culture in general, this term comes from a very specific source.
The phrase “Where do we drop?” comes from Fortnite (pictured), where teams of players choose where to land on a map where they must compete to be the last one standing. It has now evolved into simply ‘where are we going?’
‘Where are we going?’ comes entirely from the astonishingly popular video game Fortnite.
In this game, teams drop from a flying bus into an arena where they have to search for weapons and resources and fight to be the last player standing.
Because the resources and weapons are clustered in key map locations rather than evenly spread out, the choice of starting location is the key to success.
For this reason, you will often hear players asking their teammates “where are we dropping?” as they plan their strategy.
Through this very specific usage, the term has spread and become less specific, and now generally means ‘where do we want to go?’.