10 Video Game Terms You're Using Wrong

howtogeek.com:

There's a lot of jargon and a lot of passion in the video game hobby. That's a recipe for miscommunication, and I've been seeing a lot of that as the industry becomes larger and more popular. In particular, some people use these ten terms in odd and often incorrect ways.

Walking Simulator

The term "walking simulator" is a derogatory term gamers came up with for titles like What Remains of Edith Finch, Gone Home, and Firewatch. Since these titles are not actually games, but linear interactive stories, people who are interested in actual gameplay were understandably not impressed. Of course, there's nothing wrong with an interactive story, and not everything you experience with a controller in your hands has to be a true game, but nonetheless, the term "walking simulator" applies to these non-game, interactive digital experiences.

Now, however, gamers often use the term "walking simulator" for titles that are true games. For example, Death Stranding is as much a game as Skyrim but because the main game mechanic is traversal and overcoming obstacles and enemies on your route, it's erroneously dubbed a walking sim. If you're interested in true walking simulators, our friends over at GameRant have a great list of the best walking simulators that everyone should play.

Simulation

This is a tricky one, because simulation is something that happens on a spectrum. At the most extreme end, you get pure simulators such as Microsoft Flight Simulator which tries to be a serious and true digital reproduction of what flying a plane is really like. Generally, pure simulations like these allow you to learn the real world skills you'd need to actually do the thing in real life.

However, people in the gaming world throw this word around a little liberally. There's the tongue-in-cheek stuff like Surgeon Simulator where the joke is that it's the opposite of a simulator, but then there's a fuzzy area where some games that have a veneer of realism are referred to as simulators