This page will serve as a dictionary for less geeky, who still want to read and understand these posts. It will be fleshed out as I go along - feel free to point out any definitions that are missing!
Press Ctrl+F to search this page for the term you're looking for.
Browser: A program that allows users to view pages from the World Wide Web. Many different browsers exist, with various strengths. Mozilla Firefox is hugely customisable, with a wide variety of plug-ins and extensions, though is sometimes accused of being "bloated" and overly greedy with system resources. Google Chrome is very slimmed-down and speedy, though has recently expanded to offer built-in apps, as part of Google's commitment to cloud computing. Opera strikes a middle ground between streamlining and functionality, though its capacity for pre-caching makes it a favourite for mobile users on slow connections. Internet Explorer is the number one browser for downloading other browsers. Apple also offer their own proprietary browser called "Safari".
Build: n. a particular set-up for a character, system, etc. Normally used of the skills, abilities, and equipment of an RPG character (e.g. "my Paladin build gets great aggro"), or the hardware of a gaming rig.
Class: n. A category of character, with inherent skills, strengths and weaknesses, and other characteristics. The most common genre to feature classes are RPGs, though there exist others (Team Fortress 2 is a notable example of a class-based FPS). Traditional classes in RPGs can usually be grouped into combat, magical, and stealth classes. Combat classes include warrior, ranger, paladin, and berserker. Magical classes include mage, sorceror, and cleric. Stealth classes are usually referred to rogues or thieves. There exists some crossover - for instance, clerics can normally deal hefty combat damage, rangers can often exhibit stealthy abillities, and paladins usually have some magical ability. For more information, see the individual class definitions.
Cloud Computing: to add
D&D: to add.
DRM: n. Digital Rights Management. Technology put in place (typically, by large companies) to restrict what consumers can do with media, in terms of copying, transferring, or playing back. For example, music purchased via the Apple Music Store can only be played on an iPod or other Apple device.
FPS: [1] First-person shooter. A game in which the perspective is as from the character being controlled (hence "first-person" - "third-person" refers to a perspective where the controlled character is visible), and the main method of interaction with other entities is shooting them.
[2] Frames per second, measured in Hertz (1 Hz = 1 frame per second). A measure of the smoothness of the display of a moving image. Most games have the option to display the FPS on screen. Having a low FPS can make it difficult to play a game to a high standard, as the image will be jerky and not respond predictably or smoothly to input. However, higher is not always better - experiments by the BBC have shown that very high frame rates can be disorientating to viewers. A rate somewhere between 30 and 60 Hz is considered acceptable for most games.
Level: [1] n. A section of a platforming or puzzle video game, with a defined beginning and end. Normally levels come in sequential order. A section that is returned to many times, in which to complete different challenges or obtain different objectives, might more descriptively be called a world.
[2] n. A measure of the prowess of an RPG character. After gaining a certain number of experience points, a character will typically gain a level - however, this will increase (usually exponentially), so it is harder to get from level 2 to level 3 than it is to get from level 1 to level 2, and so on. Standards vary widely between games, but the general consensus seems to be that level 40 characters are certainly a force to be reckoned with, while level 60 is usually approaching the maximum attainable (though games exist with level caps of 20 and of 100)
[3] vi. To level up
Level up: vi. RPGs typically award experience points (EXP/XP) for completing tasks, such as killing monsters, completing quests, and other challenges. Gaining a specified amount of XP will allow the character to level up. This involves an increase in potency of some kind, dependent on the game being played - some allow you to increase base stats or skill abilities on a level up, while some increase those abilities continuously with XP but allow certain "perks" on levelling up.
Note that, in keeping with the typical geeky playfulness with language, this can also be a noun ("I should get a level up from this quest") and a transitive verb ("Killing those whomp-rats will level me up"). Note that, in almost every situation, the preposition can be dropped (though see level).
MMO: Massively Multiplayer Online. See entry for MMORPG. Other MMO genres exist (such as MMOFPS), but they are rare.
MMORPG: Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. An RPG in which the game world is run on a central server, to which all the players connect. This means that all the players are simultaneously playing the game in the same world, and can talk, team up, trade items, or fight together. World of Warcraft is the best known example, but others include Everquest, Guild Wars, Warhammer Online, EVE, Runescape, and Ultima Online.
Powergaming: vi. playing a game "to win". Most RPG's (particularly MMORPG's) contain an element of role-play - that is, the ability to create and control a character, with an imagined backstory, personality, and individual attributes. In fact, in MMO's, good roleplaying is prized as a valuable skill in a player - there are some people for whom the principal enjoyment of the game comes not from levelling up and collecting loot, but from portraying a nuanced character and interacting with other characters in a fulfilling way.
Powergamers think this is so much sissy nonsense. They play to be the best, nothing else. They want the strongest sword, the biggest gun, the best collection of shiny things. Who cares if their skills choices are "out of character", or they're using knowledge that their in-game character couldn't possibly have - as long as it gets them closer to their goal of being the biggest/fastest/strongest, it's all fair game. Note that powergaming also covers the use of unintended bugs or quirks in the game that allow for advantages that the developers didn't mean to include, or that go contrary to the intended spirit of play.
Note that, despite the (hopefully comic) tone of contempt that I've set above, I have nothing against powergaming. Just like speedrunning, it's one way to play the game - if you enjoy it, and it doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of it, that's cool. In fact, in some of the more technical and involved games, I imagine there could be a lot of satisfaction in figuring out the exact best build. It may not be how I most enjoy playing the game, but if you do, good luck to you.
Rig: [n.] a system, normally a gaming PC, but sometimes other; e.g. a home entertainment system.
RPG: Role-playing game. Not, as you might imagine, some form of kinky undertaking between a consenting nerd and his console, but a game in which the primary satisfaction arises from taking on the role of one or more characters, and living their adventure vicariously. Characters in RPG's almost exclusively feature some form of stats or abilities that can be levelled up, thus making the player more potent. When this levelling up becomes the primary source of satisfaction, the player is powergaming. Pokémon is one of the most widely known RPG's - other notable examples include the Baldur's Gate, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, and Final Fantasy franchises, and World of Warcraft (an MMORPG). These are often based around the ruleset and mythos of a tabletop/pen-and-paper RPG, notably D&D.
Server: A server is a computer (or other device) that provides other devices (clients) with information and content over the internet, or some other connection. This web page that you are reading now is stored on the blogspot server; when you click the link to view it, your browser sends a request to the blogspot server, which responds by sending back this page.
In the context of games, a server is a single computer that multiple players connect to in order to play together. Sometimes this will be the computer of one of the players (for smaller games), and sometimes it will be a dedicated server - a computer that exists only to be a game server. Some big MMO's (like World of Warcraft) have multiple different servers, to handle the large numbers of players.
Speedrunning: completing a game as quickly as possible, through a combination of skill and utilization of exploits. Such a completion of the game is known as a speedrun. The Metroid series of games are notable for containing shortcuts that skilled players can uncover to complete the game in a drastically reduced time. This video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1IRxTN-_kU shows selected portions of a player completing Morrowind (a game that can easily require two or three hundred hours of playtime) in 7 minutes and 30 seconds.
