Video Game Jargon “Proc”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Brian, and I’m calling from Washington, D.C.

Hey, Brian, welcome.

Well, thanks so much for having me.

I have a question about a word that I’ve encountered in gaming, like computer and video gaming, and it’s proc, spelled P-R-O-C.

So this term proc, I’ve encountered it, it’s when there’s a random event or effect that occurs.

So it’s something like, my sword has a 50% chance of poisoning you.

And if it poisons you, then we say that it procs.

And so it’s such an interesting term to me because it doesn’t seem like it’s something a lot of gaming terms seem to come from like an inside joke or something.

And it doesn’t seem like that.

And, you know, PROC made me think of like procure or process.

But I was just curious if you have any sense of the origin or etymology of this term.

That was such an interesting one.

And I bet you Googled it and then came across all the arguments, right?

Yes, I did.

I did.

That didn’t seem to be a ton of consensus.

Oh, yeah, because they’re bickering about it.

They’ve been bickering about it, it looks like, for like 15 years at least, about whether it comes from process or procedure or something else.

And I think I can help you narrow this down.

I did some digging of my own.

And looking at the actual digital data, because we have some historical record on gaming, it becomes clear that the term comes from the multi-user dungeon days, the mud days, that era of text-based games that you could play on LANs or dial-up or the internet from the 70s onward.

So in that era, there are many examples of the noun proc, that’s P-R-O-C, and it’s given as a shortening of procedure.

Which is itself a shortening of special procedure and it’s written in computer code when you’re a programmer or a gaming programmer as spec proc, S-P-E-C underscore P-R-O-C.

And that is the origin of it as far as can be told.

And I’m basing this on messages in news groups.

This is the old, like before internet forums, before the web even, this is how people communicate.

News groups. This is how groups happened. People who worked on the games left messages with each other, sent messages to each other about this stuff.

Now, one of the MUDs, one of the multi-user dungeon online games that had special procedures, those spec procs, and the noun proc as part of its jargon was Diku, that’s D-I-K-U, which first appeared in 1990.

And now there was another game.

Did you ever play EverQuest?

I don’t know how old you are.

I’m in my mid-30s.

So, yeah, I never played EverQuest, but I’m very familiar.

Yeah, so EverQuest is another one of these.

You know, it’s like swords and wizards and stuff.

And it was based…

So it wasn’t based on Deku.

It was influenced by Deku.

You know, there’s potions and trolls and caves and exploration, that sort of thing.

You remember these games where you’re always, like, picking up things and seeing what kind of powers they have and encountering villains that you have to conquer with whatever you’re carrying, right?

Yeah, of course.

Yeah, and you get a new weapon and a new sword and it does things, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, you’re swapping gear all the time, right?

You can only carry a certain amount.

What do I put down?

What do I pick up?

And that proccing becomes really important because some things procc at different rates.

And so you’ve heard that I just verbed that.

I just verbed that noun, proc.

And that’s what’s really important here.

What we’re really looking at here is when did that noun become the verb?

Because for me, that’s really the important part.

That’s really when I think that it went from being a narrowly used term that’s kind of more about programming and more about software development and then became more about the games and the gamers and the players.

Okay.

Do you use this at all in your offline life with other friends when you’re talking about something out in the world?

Is it exclusively, it hasn’t migrated out of your screen.

It hasn’t migrated out of my screen, but I’m also pretty self-conscious about that sort of thing, so I wouldn’t want to give away too much nerdery.

Yeah, you’re giving away a lot of nerdery by appearing on this show, you know.

But this is cool nerdery.

This is erudite nerdery.

Yeah, your phone call procked in an experience with us on the air.

There you go.

Exactly.

Thanks for the call, Brian.

We really appreciate it.

Thanks for nerding out.

Yeah, thank you both so much.

Have a great day.

All right, rock on.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

What is the jargon of your pastime?

Are you a knitter?

Are you a coin collector?

Maybe you like to collect gems when you go on hikes.

Whatever it is, let us know, 877-929-9673.

Or tell us the jargon of your pastime in email, words@waywordradio.org.