Words Worth Knowing: Map
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 Oct 24, 2016.
What It Is: Map = The generic term for all the playable space the player can freely explore.
What It Means: The "map" refers to the footprint of the game world in games where the player is engaged in exploring, attacking, defending and collecting activities.
Why You Care: When you ask your son or daughter what they are doing in their game, they might reply with something like "I'm scouting the map for hidden collectables" or "I'm practising this map for when we next play online together." To non-gamers, this use of the word "map" might sound strange, but it is the correct technical term and is nothing to be concerned about. Some games permit create and capable players to create their own maps to add to the game. If this is the case, it is recorded in the Creativity section of each game entry. [link removed]
