Back in May of 2016, during the summer after I graduated high school, I randomly bought a game called Overwatch and it actually kind of changed the course of my life. Because of this game, I decided that I wanted to work in esports for my future career and to become a media major. The reason that I bring this up is because Overwatch is a game that has a lot of special vocabulary attached to it. There are many terms that players use in the game that would be considered odd to those that are not also players, such as “goats”, “grav”, “blade” and, probably the most infamous, “C9”. Some of these are already common words that people use, but their meanings are very different within the community of the game.
It is kind of different for me because, since I have been a part of the community for so long that I have seen many of these terms being created and popularized as the game continues to go on and different strategies being played. I would definitely say that this type of language is a secondary Discourse to me but considering the amount of time that I have put into, not just the game, but also the esports league, I would say that it has massively impacted my lifeworld Discourse as well. Even though all of Overwatch is online, the effects of it have had an impact in my daily life, mostly in my language. There many times during my day that I catch myself using different terms that I hear either in game or while I am watching Twitch, it has gotten to the point that even my friends have started to use some of the different words that I use. A specific example of these is with my use of the word “pog”, which, on Twitch, means to get excited about something or to celebrate something cool. I say this word so much that many of my friends do now as well.
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