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We have to end is. Should games like Borderlands and Destiny be called Looter Shooters, Shlooters or Loot em' Ups?
- Thread starter Lant_War
- Start date
"Loot" feels like it should die in the late 00s WoW of "phat l00t", so I vote all those are terrible.
Shlooter or loosher are the obvious answers. People calling them "looter shooter" are trolling, that's way too long.
This.What is actually wrong with some of you? Is this fucking 4chan? This shit stopped being funny immediately
Must be new low here. How about we call them just Loot FPS like they are or something.
I was shlooting all night
I love watching Let's Shloots
He is my favorite Shloot streamer
P E R F E C T
I love watching Let's Shloots
He is my favorite Shloot streamer
P E R F E C T
My other thread was about discussing the future of shlooters so I tried to avoid going off-topic with the whole "shlooter" thing and for the most part we succeeded.
But since this thread is specifically about the whole Great Debate of the shlooter name, I'd like to finally address the issue myself:
Shlooter is objectively the best option as a name for this genre.
Let's break it down.
Option #1: Loot 'em up.
Sorry "loot 'em up" fans, but we can throw this out immediately. The whole point of the subgenre is that you combine TPS/FPS elements with the looting design of games like Diablo; if the name doesn't capture the "shooting" component of the genre, then it just flat out doesn't work. It's a fun reference to "shoot 'em up" but ultimately it's not really viable for this reason. (As an aside "shloot 'em up" is actually viable for this reason, but it seems excessive and doesn't have as much pragmatic utility as just sticking with "shlooter").
Option #2: Loot(er) Shooter.
For the sake of convenience I'll just refer to this option as "loot shooter." There are two distinct but significant issues with "loot shooter" that make it a suboptimal name for the genre.
Problem #1. It suggests that the loot itself is what's being shot. By putting "loot" before "shooter," the plain language of the name seems to indicate that the action of shooting is being applied to the loot itself; ergo, the title is facially inaccurate because it suggests that we are shooting the loot rather than shooting the enemy that we then loot. We rely only on our contextual understanding of what a "loot shooter" is in order to bypass this logical fallacy and make the assumed inference that we are in fact shooting enemies for loot when the name itself does not support that very basic setup. "Loot shooter" is therefore a rather clumsy approximation of the core gameplay of the genre; you do loot, and you do shoot, but you don't shoot loot. And yet this is precisely what the name implies because of how haphazardly the words are arranged.
Problem #2. Even if we make the assumptive leap that we are shooting enemies for loot and not shooting the loot itself, "loot shooter" is chronologically inaccurate because we, in fact, shoot first and loot second. "Loot shooter," again just in terms of its pure plain language appearance, suggests by virtue of its syntax that the looting occurs before the shooting when it is an incontrovertible fact of the genre that the shooting must occur beforehand in order for the loot to materialize from the fallen corpse/remains of the enemy. The issue is once again one of linguistic clumsiness; of course we implicitly understand, almost a priori, that shooting must occur before looting. And yet "loot shooter" intimates the complete opposite.
Option #3: Shlooter.
And now we reach "shlooter." It has saddened me that a rather elegant solution to every problem discussed above has been dismissed as a trifling meme when, in reality, it is a rather inspired portmanteau that perfectly conveys not just the shooting and the looting (and, importantly, in that accurate order), but also suggests the close relationship between the two. You do, in fact, loot the remains of what you shoot. It is an inexorable component of the game design; the two concepts go hand-in-hand so inextricably that to portmanteau them together actually makes logical sense in addition to being the most efficient name for the genre in terms of keystrokes.
I could go on but I feel at this point I've said enough. Shlooter isn't just the best option; when you really break it down, it's, well, the only option.
But since this thread is specifically about the whole Great Debate of the shlooter name, I'd like to finally address the issue myself:
Shlooter is objectively the best option as a name for this genre.
Let's break it down.
Option #1: Loot 'em up.
Sorry "loot 'em up" fans, but we can throw this out immediately. The whole point of the subgenre is that you combine TPS/FPS elements with the looting design of games like Diablo; if the name doesn't capture the "shooting" component of the genre, then it just flat out doesn't work. It's a fun reference to "shoot 'em up" but ultimately it's not really viable for this reason. (As an aside "shloot 'em up" is actually viable for this reason, but it seems excessive and doesn't have as much pragmatic utility as just sticking with "shlooter").
Option #2: Loot(er) Shooter.
For the sake of convenience I'll just refer to this option as "loot shooter." There are two distinct but significant issues with "loot shooter" that make it a suboptimal name for the genre.
Problem #1. It suggests that the loot itself is what's being shot. By putting "loot" before "shooter," the plain language of the name seems to indicate that the action of shooting is being applied to the loot itself; ergo, the title is facially inaccurate because it suggests that we are shooting the loot rather than shooting the enemy that we then loot. We rely only on our contextual understanding of what a "loot shooter" is in order to bypass this logical fallacy and make the assumed inference that we are in fact shooting enemies for loot when the name itself does not support that very basic setup. "Loot shooter" is therefore a rather clumsy approximation of the core gameplay of the genre; you do loot, and you do shoot, but you don't shoot loot. And yet this is precisely what the name implies because of how haphazardly the words are arranged.
Problem #2. Even if we make the assumptive leap that we are shooting enemies for loot and not shooting the loot itself, "loot shooter" is chronologically inaccurate because we, in fact, shoot first and loot second. "Loot shooter," again just in terms of its pure plain language appearance, suggests by virtue of its syntax that the looting occurs before the shooting when it is an incontrovertible fact of the genre that the shooting must occur beforehand in order for the loot to materialize from the fallen corpse/remains of the enemy. The issue is once again one of linguistic clumsiness; of course we implicitly understand, almost a priori, that shooting must occur before looting. And yet "loot shooter" intimates the complete opposite.
Option #3: Shlooter.
And now we reach "shlooter." It has saddened me that a rather elegant solution to every problem discussed above has been dismissed as a trifling meme when, in reality, it is a rather inspired portmanteau that perfectly conveys not just the shooting and the looting (and, importantly, in that accurate order), but also suggests the close relationship between the two. You do, in fact, loot the remains of what you shoot. It is an inexorable component of the game design; the two concepts go hand-in-hand so inextricably that to portmanteau them together actually makes logical sense in addition to being the most efficient name for the genre in terms of keystrokes.
I could go on but I feel at this point I've said enough. Shlooter isn't just the best option; when you really break it down, it's, well, the only option.
Was shlooter already a thing or did Alex Navarro actually came up with it? It has to be shlooter.
This post somehow made me hate the term even more. A portmanteau is supposed to be clever, and there's nothing clever about taking one letter from one word and adding it to another word.
It's Look Around You-caliber.
