Sometimes video games like to give things pretty complex names, as a result, sometimes we have to simply them. Other times we just say a phrase so much it becomes easier to shorten it. Some of these acronyms people start to use are helpful and punchy, like “Looking for group” becoming LFG. However, others are a bit more unwieldy, like Final Fantasy fans calling Stanger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin “S.o.P.F.F.O.”
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Our favourite video game acronyms though have to be the downright silly ones. Some of these are funny coincidences, while for others we bet the developers knew what they were doing, and some… well some, of them are just baffling.
13L.O.L.
League of Legendshardly struggles for brand recognition. After all, it’s one of the most popular games in the world. However, its acronym, L.o.L., which fans latched onto shortly after release might cause you a moment of uncertainty in some situations.
It just feels like bad luck that the initials of the world’s most popular game would coincide with the most popular text chat shorthand. So be careful if someone asks you what you are playing because while you might want to tell them you are playing some League, it could sound like you are laughing at them.
12B.F.G.
Doomhas plenty of iconic aspects: theguitar-shredding music, the nightmarish demons, and even the constant grimacing expression of Doomguy. But maybe its most lasting bit of iconography is the destructive Big"Freaking"Gun.
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It’s an apt name too, what else do you need to know about this demon-slaying tool? While there is something very funny about the idea of scientists developing a weapon only to name it something so blunt, we can’t deny that it’s still cool as hell. Just don’t confuse it with the classic children’s novel, that would be awkward.
11C.O.D.
We use this shorthand so much now, it’s lost some of its novelty, but the more you think about it, the weirder it is that what started out as a gritty World War 2 series became abbreviated to a fish. Maybe that is just in keeping with the series less, than realistic depiction of war though.
This acronym is so ubiquitous that even competitors started to poke fun at it. For years the Halo series' secondary controller layout that was more similar to that ofCall of Dutyand was cheekily referred to as “Fishstick” controls in the options.
10M.A.G.
The best shorthand names are usually ones that communities give games after they’ve released. C.o.D., L.o.L., and, T.H.P.S., all came from the community. M.A.G. did not.
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M.A.G. or “Massive Action Game”, was PlayStation’s attempt to dethrone Battlefield as the best large-scale multiplayer shooter on the market. However, sadly the game was released shortly before the infamous PSN outage of 2011, and not even some unsubtle wordplay could save it.
9W.T.F.
The renaming of Japan’s Batio Hell 2000 into Work Time Fun for release in the West is certainly fitting. That is because as you play this ridiculousWario Ware-esque micro-game collection, you will be saying “WTF” a lot.
The game is a pointed critique of the mundanity of work, as it forces you to play through countless repetitive work-inspired menial tasks to unlock and slightly more interesting mini-games inspired by other fields of employment. The game is weird, funny, and baffling, making its name extremely fitting.
8D.L.C.
Cupheadhas a lot of good wordplay in its 1930s-inspired world of caricatures. However, the best came after the game’s release when the developers, Studio MDHR, announced it was working on an expansion called The Delicious Last Course.
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The best thing about this pun was that it was never originally highlighted, meaning it took many fans quite a while before realising the devilish wordplay at hand. It’s a great joke, helped by the fact that the game’s final serving of content was almost as expansive as the base game.
7S.C.U.M.M.
What if I told you some of your favourite adventure games were developed by SCUMM? No, I’m not just being rude to the fine folks at LucasArts, the hybrid engine and coding language used to create games like The Secret of Monkey Island, Sam And Max, Full Throttle, Loom, and Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, was actually called S.C.U.M.M.
This stood for “Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion” and is one of the most important bits of technology to the success and diversity of the adventure game genre. The engine’s name was also referenced throughout many of LucasArt’s games including being a key ingredient to grog and the name of a bar in the Monkey Island series.
6F.A.K.K. 2
Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2 is an obscure third-person shooter from the early 2000s developed by Ritual Entertainment using id Tech 3, the same engine that powered Quake 3. The game would be lost time were it not for its tie-in with two even more obscure adult animated movies, Heavy Metal and Heavy Metal 2000.
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The game was somewhat notable for allowing you to dual-wield different types of guns at the same time but is mainly remembered for its ridiculous acronym. F.A.K.K. 2 actually stands for “Federation-Assigned Ketogenic Killzone to the second level”, which not only is a hilarious jumble of nonsense but is also somehow both the protagonist’s alias and the name given to her home planet. It’s not actually rude, but it sure sounds that way, and it’s funny to say.
5L.S.D.
L.S.D.: Dream Emulator was a Japan-only PlayStation game which apparently stood for “Link Speed Dream”, and most certainly was not a reference to any illicit substances that may have inspired the game.
The game’s development was headed by Osamu Sato, a Japanese artist and photographer, and it is more of an art piece than a video game. Simply about exploring dream-like settings the game is extremely surreal and worth seeking out gameplay for, but let’s be real, they’re fooling no one with “Link Speed Dream.”
4G.U.N.
When it came time to create a peacekeeping organisation in theSonicuniverse, somehow Sonic Team decided this was somehow the best name for the heroic group.
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That’s right, maybe the most threatening acronym of all time actually stands for “Guardian Units of Nations”. This is definitely not confusing at all.
