Game genres
RTS
Real-Time Strategy — a strategy game where everyone plays at the same time, continuously, instead of taking turns.
MMO
Massively Multiplayer Online — a game that hosts very large numbers of players together in one shared, persistent world.
RPG
Role-Playing Game — a game built around character progression, story, and player choices.
ARPG
Action RPG — an RPG with real-time combat rather than turn-based fights.
4X
eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate — a grand-strategy subgenre about building a civilization over a long arc.
MMO & server tech
server meshing
A technique that stitches many game servers together so players see one seamless world, even across server boundaries.
node
In some MMOs, a player-driven settlement that grows from a camp into a village, city, or metropolis based on player activity.
node EXP
Experience points that grow a 'node' (settlement) — earned by players questing, gathering, and crafting in its region.
metropolis
The largest tier of a player-grown settlement/node; a major economic and political hub in the world.
siege
A timed, large-scale attack on a settlement — attackers try to destroy it, defenders try to hold it.
caravan
A player-driven trade convoy that moves goods between settlements — valuable, and vulnerable to attack.
frigate
A player-built warship used to protect naval trade routes from pirates.
alpha
An early, unfinished test phase of a game — features are incomplete and may break; players help find issues.
beta
A later test phase, closer to finished, with broader testing before release.
Game systems
world state
The shared record of everything that has happened in the game world — who owns what, what's been built or destroyed.
reactivity
When the game world changes in response to player choices — NPCs remember your deeds, towns reshape, dialogue shifts.
emergent
Behavior that wasn't explicitly designed but arises from simpler rules interacting — player-run economies, cartels, surprise tactics.
faction
An in-game group or nation players can align with or fight against, with its own goals and reputation system.
Hardware & performance
GPU
Graphics Processing Unit — the chip that renders the game's visuals; the main driver of framerate and image quality.
VRAM
Video RAM — memory on the graphics card used for textures and frames; more of it lets you run higher settings.
ray tracing
A rendering technique that simulates how light bounces, for realistic shadows, reflections, and lighting — costly to compute.
framerate
How many images (frames) the game shows per second; higher = smoother motion. 60 fps is a common target.
resolution
How many pixels make up the image — higher resolution means a sharper picture.
DDR5
A generation of system RAM (memory); newer and faster than DDR4.
3D V-Cache
AMD's stacked L3 cache that gives the CPU very fast access to data, notably boosting game framerates.
HBM
High Bandwidth Memory — fast stacked memory used by some high-end GPUs and AI chips.
Engines & dev
Unreal Engine
A widely-used commercial game engine from Epic Games; powers many large-studio (AAA) games. UE5 is the current generation.
engine
The core software framework a game is built on — rendering, physics, networking, and the rules that tie them together.
asset
Any piece of game content — a 3D model, texture, sound, or animation.
pipeline
An automated workflow that turns raw input (art, data) into finished game content.
procedural
Generated by rules or algorithms rather than hand-placed — e.g. terrain or quests that the game builds itself.