Times, changes, and internet speak

Well I haven't written in quite a while. There have been quite a few changes over the past year that have made me take my life in a different direction. I have taken the behavioral therapy route instead of gaming, which actually turned out very nice. I still get to enjoy video games, debating the many different topics that arise, and I get to follow another passion which is therapy. Needless to say life is pretty nice.

The main reason I wanted to write was in regards to "Buzzwords". Most people use buzzwords, whether it is known to them or not, on a fairly regular basis. Most buzzwords are used so often that we fail to call them, or their validity, into question. Of course I could list many of the different words, but I wish to focus on one main buzzword for the world of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) -- Themepark.

The buzzword Themepark seems to have arrived due to irate gamers looking for a way to label the many MMORPGs, such as World of Warcraft. This is usually looked at as a derogatory term referring to the lack of player input or open-world feel. They use this to say that a games mechanics and story never change even if some of the actions, or characters, a player uses changes. So these games replicate the feeling of going to Disneyland or Six Flags, where you always get the same ride no matter what. Thus gamers have coined a term and many have chosen to use it haphazardly when referring to games that might not quite fit the definition of "themepark".

Where my point comes across is with the usage of the buzzword and how people may start to use it correctly, but it often evolves into a new meaning altogether. The meaning gets lost as the word gets stretched to cover more and more games, until finally the word, which might have contained some validity, is now nothing more than a cheap insult. Many buzzwords seem to share this fate, and thus are eventually forsaken for new "hipper" words.

All in all I must ask one thing, please make sure you know about the word you are using. There is nothing worse than using a buzzword when talking about a topic, only to show you don't really know its meaning.