Learn Video Game History and Terminology: 78 Flashcards from Pong to Battle Royale

Gaming vocabulary is a language of its own. Someone who has never played can still read a headline about the 1983 crash, a battle royale, pay-to-win mechanics or a roguelike and feel lost. The Video Games: History & Terminology deck (code JF4442 on Flip It) fixes that with 78 flashcards: one half is a timeline from Spacewar! to the PlayStation 5, the other half is the working vocabulary of genres, business models and multiplayer slang.

Here is how to get through it in about two weeks without mixing up your Bushnells and your Baers.

What the 78 cards actually cover

Three clusters, roughly equal in size:

• History: Spacewar! (1962, MIT), Computer Space (1971), Pong (1972), Ralph H. Baer and the Magnavox Odyssey, Nolan Bushnell and Atari, the golden age of arcades, the 1983 crash, the NES rescue of 1985, the Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, PlayStation (1994), Xbox (2001), the current generation.
• Platforms & genres: console, PC game, arcade, handheld, mobile, cloud gaming, VR, AR, FPS, RPG, MMORPG, platformer, battle royale, sandbox, MOBA, fighting, racing, puzzle, sports, simulation, survival, stealth, roguelike.
• Industry & player culture: indie vs AAA, DLC, season pass, microtransaction, pay-to-win, free-to-play, beta test, early access, loot box, esports, streaming, mod, ROM, emulation, plus slang like NPC, HUD, permadeath, speedrunning, glitch, lag, ping, griefing, camping, noob, GG, AFK, guild, PvP, PvE, co-op, split-screen, cross-platform.

Sample cards from the deck

Two tips that make this deck stick

1. Anchor the timeline on four dates: 1972, 1983, 1985, 1994. Pong and the Odyssey both land in 1972, which is why Baer and Bushnell are so easy to confuse. Remember it this way: Baer built the box (home console), Bushnell built the business (Atari, arcade Pong). Then the crash (1983), the NES rescue (1985) and Sony's CD-ROM PlayStation (1994) give you three pivots that every other console card hangs off of. The Sega Genesis (1988) slots between the last two.

2. Learn genres as pairs of examples, not definitions. The deck gives two titles for almost every genre. Memorize the examples first (Fortnite/PUBG, Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat, Metal Gear Solid/Hitman, Tetris/Portal): the definition follows naturally, and on the test day the example is what triggers recall. For the slang block, group the acronyms by context: match etiquette (GG, AFK, noob), combat modes (PvP, PvE, co-op), and network issues (lag, ping).

Suggested pace

• Days 1-4: history cards only, in chronological order, then shuffled.
• Days 5-9: platforms and genres, always saying the example titles out loud.
• Days 10-14: industry terms and slang, then the whole deck mixed.

Log in to Flip It, open Video Games: History & Terminology (JF4442) in the library, and let the spaced-repetition scheduler handle the review intervals. GG.