Team Fortress 2 Live Action Fan Video

A Guide to Video Game Lingo 5

1. pwnStar (noun) - someone who dominates a particular video game to the point of celebrity status, whose friends no longer like playing with.

"Let's leave this server. That dude's a pwnStar."

2. Camping (verb) - "The Act of staying in one spot in a map in a first person shooter video game to gain a tactical advantage over an enemy or group of enemies. The person committing the act of camping is the 'camper' and the spot on the map it is happening in is 'camped.'" (Urban Dictionary)

"That n00b's camping long hallway."

3. Patching (verb) - the process of updating a video game by inserting code into it.

"We can't do multi-player until Stephan's done patching."

Team Fortress 2

Adam and I were playing Team Fortress 2 one night and we came across a player whose screen name was NickelbackSavedMyLife. Another player on that particular server asked this player if Nickelback had indeed saved his life. Without qualification or explanation, NickelbackSavedMyLife simply responded, "Yes."

Postcard 2010: PC Gaming

I had been to my share of LAN parties where a network cable was all I needed to connect my computer to a bunch of great friends and play video games for hours. I would spend hours playing video games and then I would go the rest of the year without thinking about starting up Warcraft III: Frozen Throne or Counter-Strike: Source. Meanwhile, good friends like Stephan, Adam and Joe were playing video games all year round. The difference in skill level between me and these other boys was gigantic, and quite often it just made playing certain video games no longer fun.

At the end of 2009, the digital content delivery service known as Steam had its first big post-holidays sale. Interesting games I'd seen friends playing in Stephan's basement were now available for incredibly low prices. I could play the same games that my friends were playing only it would cost me 20 to 40 percent of the price. At the holiday LAN of 2009 I had made up my mind: 2010 would be the year when I went gung ho into PC gaming, and particularly first person shooter. The week prior to 2010 I spent stockpiling fantastic video games for dirt cheap.

While I found myself playing a whole lot of different games, Team Fortress 2, Bioshock, Left 4 Dead, and Left 4 Dead 2 being among my favorites, it was the quirky FPS Borderlands and its brilliantly crafted DLC Zombie Island of Dr. Ned, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, and Claptrap's New Robot Revolution that made it easy to make good on my promise to get into PC gaming. I could start up the game in Fort Worth, Texas, hook up my head set, and find myself in the company of my good friends Adam (College Station, Texas), Derek (Grand Rapids, Michigan) and Stephan (Corpus Christi, Texas). While gaming, the world that I had known prior to leaving Michigan wasn't all that far away any more.

LANs became different. I could keep up with my friends, both when it comes to computer hardware and game performance. Over Christmas, I played a CS: Source gun game mod with six or seven friends in which I was neck in neck with Joe, who had probably logged more hours of gaming in 2010 then everyone in the room combined. Rather than simply forgetting about PC gaming after the holiday LAN, I found myself trying to deal with difficult gaming quandaries such as which game to play after Borderlands (no good answer yet) and whether to subscribe to DC Universe Online or Star Wars: The Old Republic in 2011 (hopefully both, but at different times).

A Guide to Video Game Lingo

1. Molly - (noun) Molotov Cocktail; an improvised incendiary device created by filling a glass bottle with a flammable substance, capped with an alcohol soaked cloth wick; capable of doing fire damage to multiple targets when wick is lit and bottle is smashed on or near targets.

"Tank! Hit it with a molly!"

2. 'Nade - (noun) Grenade; an anti-personnel weapon that explodes a short time after release; capable of doing explosive to one or more targets depending on proximity to explosion.

"'Nade out!"

3. Spam - (verb) Originally a reference to mass, unfiltered e-mails, spamming now also refers to indiscriminate use of multiple projectile devices such as grenades, smoke grenades, flash bangs, pipe bombs or Molotov cocktails.

"That noob just keeps spamming 'nades."

March Mayhem Developer's Showdown

Gamers might find themselves in this March Madness tournament courtesy of The Escapist. The March Mayhem Developer's Showdown pits a variety of game developers against one another in the competition of the best developer.

The Final Four pitted three of my favorite developers against one another. Blizzard, the makers of the Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo series, fought valiantly but finally lost against BioWare, the developers responsible for the Mass Effect games and Dragon Age, while Valve, the innovative designers of the Halflife, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress and Left 4 Dead series, dominated annoying and superfluous Zynga, who cursed the world by developing Farmville, Mafia Wars and Vampire Wars (these are the people responsible for all the stupid Facebook invitations daily).

My prediction is that BioWare is going to win. They've started off with a decent lead, and I've heard more ravings about Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age in the last year than even the magnificent Left 4 Dead 2. If it were up to me, however, Valve would win. Even if Valve couldn't lay claim to some of the most entertaining games in the business, which it can, the content-delivery system called Steam is reason enough to consider these folk the best developers. I would have chosen Blizzard over BioWare as well because they innovated the world of on-line playing with BattleNet and World of Warcraft.

The final battle between Valve and BioWare is being waged now. You can vote here.