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[bryant]

My current favorite piece of gaming slang is “lasersharking.”

“Hey, you know, that game concept would be better if the sharks had lasers on their head.” Lasersharking. Leave the poor concept alone; not all concepts need lasers to reach their full potential.

Rifts is all lasersharking, all the way to the bottom turtle.

Comments

Re: Because I'm a pedant.

[eddyfate.livejournal.com]

Chicken/egg syndrome?

I would guess that since the verb has both past and future tenses ("lasersharked" and "lasersharking"), that the act depends on the perspective of the speaker.

To wit, from the perspective of Westerns, Deadlands has lasersharked the genre. From the perspective of Deadlands, however, time-travel is a lasersharking of Deadlands, and FURTHER lasersharking of Westerns. From the perspective of science fiction, however, Deadlands is not quite up to lasershark-par.

Which brings up another point - what is the antonym of lasershark? "Vanilla"?

Re: Because I'm a pedant.

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

The EnWorlders have a verb for it: nerf. To soften, mute, or make less "kewl."

Re: Because I'm a pedant.

[eddyfate.livejournal.com]

Oh duh. Nerf. I know - I've even USED it.

Cool - now I have a new contribution to my vocabulary, and a rediscovery of an old one. :-)

Re: Because I'm a pedant.

[bryant]

Oh, I don't like that so much. Nerf feels negative to me, because in the CRPG field it means "weaken." And lasersharking is not synonymous with "making stronger."

Re: Because I'm a pedant.

[eddyfate.livejournal.com]

Well "ripping the lazer out of the shark" is just too long...

Re: Because I'm a pedant.

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

You're right... but there's really no way to express the idea of "making something less over-the-top" in gaming. Who has ever done such a thing? The only things that come close are retcons: Vicissitude is not an alien disease, that sort of jazz.

Re: Because I'm a pedant.

[bryant]

"There is no word in our language for restraint."

Vampire Revised is about as close as it comes, I think.

Re: Because I'm a pedant.

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

"There is no word in our language for restraint."

Tangent: you know that bit in "1984" where Orwell talks about Newspeak and details how, although one could express the idea that "this field is free from weeds," the meaning of the word "free" as we understand it today had been purged from the public consciousness? You just gave me the idea of a culture where "restraint" as anything other than an implement of bondage gear had gone the same way.