march 24 2012 151 if it sometimes seems as if youre speaking a different language than the video game fans in your household thats because you are as with any hobby gaming has its own vernacular including an oxford dictionarys worth of esoteric slang and shorthand references for everything from game systems and genres to the types of people who enjoy them thankfully for parents whove never touched a joystick or more accurately these days gamepad or motion controller learning to speak gamer doesnt require years of study in front of the ps3 wii or xbox 360 but the good news is that despite the hobbys sprawling growth into new areas like digital cloud and social games once youve mastered the basics grasping more offbeat turns of phrase quickly becomes secondnature or you could do what even the best of us are often forced to do in a pinch google the darn term consider the following gaming dictionary a crash course in all things interactive entertainment memorize it and who knows you may even become proficient enough to talk with your kids about the latest games without making them burst into tears of laughter achievement although it began as a specific term for special goals that can be completed on xbox liveenabled games in exchange for virtual badges achievements now can be earned in many different types of games players earn special callouts eg virtual trophies and in some cases points for reaching certain goals in a game in xbox live games achievement points count toward a players gamerscore avatar the character a player controls in a game or the personification of the player in a games world backward compatible when a game system can run games or use accessories created for an older system the new system is considered to be backward compatible with the old system note that backward compatibility can apply to a systems software hardware or both a system may be considered backward compatible even if some older software will not run on the newer system for example even though some xbox titles will not work on the xbox 360 the 360 is still generally backward compatible with xbox software beta a prerelease nearly featurecomplete version of a video game thats more advanced from a development standpoint than an alpha version in many cases a developer releases a beta version of a game to identify bugs before a games final release this can apply to other forms of software as well beta tests can be public open to everyone or private open to a select group of invited testers anyone taking part in a public or private beta test is a beta tester boss a notable enemy usually one possessing much greater power than other foes in the game a boss is typically found at the end of a game level casual gamer someone who plays casual games andor someone who plays games only occasionally console typically