Girlz 'N' Games webcomic #62: I think I'm going to... Ding!

I don't think this Girlz 'N' Games comic requires too much explanation. Basically you can consider it the Valentine's Day 2010 edition of the strip, a fortnight or so after the fact. You can also probably consider it the most NSFW strip in the series so far.

Anyway, this comic is about the communication difficulties that can arise in a relationship when one partner is a geeky gamer type, and the other is not. You see, this is the major problem of this kind of "interspecies dating" - the lack of shared reference and the confusion it can cause.

Here though the usual real life roles are reversed, with the person immersed in geek culture and terminology being the woman in the relationship. No doubt this strip's star has worked hard to hide her inner-dork from her partner - as I know some geek ladies prefer to do - only to out herself during a moment her brain is a tad blood deprived and she's not thinking clearly.

For the record, "Ding" is a term from massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), dating all the way back to EverQuest apparently. When a character accumulates enough experience points, they level up, gaining new abilities and skill points to assign. This moment of instantly reaching a higher level is typically accompanied by a sound effect that sounds like a "ding."

Much like other typed gaming terminology, such as "For the Win," "W00t" and "pwned," "Ding" has crossed over into the everyday verbal communication of some gamer geeks. When the gamer geek is talking to other fellow initiates there's no problem, but with non-geeks and non-gamers the use of such "alien" lingo can be confusing to the listener and is simultaneously embarrassing to the (covert) geek... That is exactly what happens to Erin's friend in Girlz 'N' Games #62.


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