Words Worth Knowing: k/d
Words Worth Knowing was a vertical I wrote weekly explaining key pieces of gaming jargon to parents, guardians and teachers, as part of the larger overall GameHub outreach effort. The column ran for nearly two years and resulted in around 60 WWK articles. GameHubHQ.com closed in late 2017. This piece originally appeared on Mar 28, 2016.
What It Is: k/d = Kill to Death Ratio.
What It Means: K/D or k/d is a shorthand statistical measurement of a player's effectiveness in online multiplayer games, tallying their number of successful kills against the number of times they have been killed.
Why You Care: k/d is only used in games where it is appropriate - multiplayer online shooting games such as Counter-Strike Source, Team Fortress 2 and games in the Call of Duty franchise. k/d is a tangible measure of a players skill - a good player kills more than they die, a poor player the opposite. Players will invest considerable time in honing their skills in order to improve their k/d ratio over time, and will aim to improve with practice.
