Today sees the launch of the new technology blogs section for Huffington Post, and, for some reason, they asked me to write something for them.
My name is Miles Jacobson, and I'm studio director at Sports Interactive. We make the Football Manager series of games.
For today's blog, as this is a new section and some of you might not be gamers, or understand the terminology used by tech and games journalists when they're talking about games, I thought I'd write an irreverent guide to some of the words and phrases you're likely to see to describe certain genres of games.
FPS - stands for "first person shooter". Normally these are games where you play a character who gets to shoot people in the face - there's usually a story in them in first player mode, but most people who play them skip the story, frustratingly for the people who spend years of their lives putting the story together.
Do not play these games online in multi-player unless you're very good at them, or else you'll find yourself being killed every few seconds by people much younger than you, and then laughing. Or that's what I find when I try, anyway.
AAA games - think blockbuster films.
Games with huge budgets, typically ranging from $20m-$100m, and made by huge teams of people, with it being usual to find teams of 100, up to teams of 300.
Often FPS games, or open world games (see below), although the occasional RPG (see below) is AAA too.
A huge gamble for the company funding, and very few of the gambles pay off. For those that do, the pay-off is huge. For those that don't, severance for the few hundred people who worked on it adds to the losses. As does all the unsold copies of the game that are stuck in retail.
Open world games - A supposedly non-linear game, that lets you explore the world and play the game the way you want to. As long as that way involves doing a load of missions, in order. In between those missions, you can do what you want though. Unless there's a timer, meaning you have to do missions at a certain point.
RPG - Stands for "role playing game". Often mistaken as being solely for "dungeons and dragons" type games, it's true that many in this genre involve elves and orcs, but sometimes you'll find yourself as a human/alien fighting humans/aliens. Normally involve more guns. And some magic thrown in for good measure.
Strategy games - tend to be turn based games, a bit like board games. You do an action, press a button, and time continues until it's your next turn. The perfect games to play whilst you're doing something else at the same time. Unless playing online, in which case you having a chat with your Mum whilst lots of people are waiting for you to take your turn can frustrate the others playing.
RTS - Real time strategy games. Like strategy games, but you don't get to think as much. Or make cups of tea whilst thinking. Time just carries on, like in the real world.
Social game - games played socially, amongst friends. Or enemies. Sometimes played online, sometimes played by groups of people sitting on a sofa, whilst drunk. Normally lead to arguments about who was best, or worst.
Apps - like TV shows to films, or singles to albums, apps tend to be smaller games (or other software) that are played on smartphones and tablets. They tend to be more bite sized than their big brothers to be able to be played in short bursts, but often lead to you missing your stop on the tube/bus/train.
Casual game - A game that is played casually, such as a puzzle game. Most often played on social networking sites, another type of website, and sometimes apps. Usually whilst you should be doing something else, like working.
Motion gaming - gaming that rather than using a joypad to play, is played using a wand thingy that you wave at the screen or in the case of Kinect, uses your body.
Sports games - annual iterations of games where little changes apart from the graphics and, occasionally, a new bit of gameplay that gamers rush out and buy due to them having the latest data set. They let you be on the field/pitch/court/rink playing out your dreams to be a footballer/hockey player/baseball star/Olympic athlete.
Sports management games - similar to sports games, but you manage the team instead of play as the players. Often referred to by lazy journalists and commentators as "spread-sheet games".
Another major difference between general sports games and management games is that these games tend to have lots of new features each year as they concentrate on gameplay, rather than graphics. Have I mentioned that Football Manager 2012 has over 800 new features in it and will be out in all good, and some bad, games shops before Xmas?