Call of Duty slang “sice”

Much of this is my opinion and recollection, but as a gamer for 25 years (MMO-gamer since Everquest) maybe I know a thing or two.

Character vs Toon

"Character" is the word old RPG players have used to describe their avatar. MOO's, MUD's, D&D, Champions, and many other pen-and-paper systems. Role-playing has an important concept of separation of "player knowledge" and "character knowledge" - what you know vs what your character should know.

Many RPG players cringe when the word "Toon" is used to mean "character". "My character" implies a connection with my identity (or at least something my identity participates in), while "my toon" is something possessed, disconnected from me. More on that later.

Pre-MMO History of Toon

• Toon (1984, pen and paper rpg)
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988, movie)
• Tiny Toon Adventures (1990, cartoon show) - note, different spelling than "Looney Tunes"

While these examples don't authoritatively show the origin of the word Toon, they do establish that the word was in use prior to the existence of MMORPGs.

The Question:

How did Toon come to be used to describe characters?

• The Realm Online (1996)
• Diablo (1996)
• Ultima Online (1997)
• Everquest (1999)
• Diablo 2 (2000)
• Runescape (2001)
• ToonTown (2003)

While ToonTown's characters are, in fact, toons, the term has been used in earlier games. My recollection is that the term mainly was used in out-of-game character/account real-money trades. The word "Toon" provides a solid disconnection between the player and what he made, allowing him to sell it without regret.

Also, consider the character systems of Diablo 1 and 2. You pick your class and then the character's appearance and gender are determined from that. If you are a male gamer playing an Amazon or a Sorceress, calling that character a "Toon" can be a signal to others that you don't identify as that gender. Once again, there is a separation from identity.

Still, these games all pre-date the rise of the term around 2006. I attribute the rise of the term "Toon" during this period as not belonging to a single game or experience, but instead to the increasing disconnection between player and character identity. This can be due to many MMO players playing second or third games - how many character connections can a player create or sustain?

This can be due to games becoming more action-oriented (vs role-play centred), there is more focus on what actions this mechanism or "Toon" is capable of, instead of what the character would do/say/feel.

The Realm Online

This game was released by Sierra in 1996. It features animated cartoon-like characters. The oldest usage of "Toon" I have identified so far comes from this game (see reference below). Because the game lacked a two-way trade system, scamming was a common occurrence. It seems reasonable to me that the characters created for the sole purpose of scamming would not be called "character", but would instead be labeled "toon".

References (more to come as I have time):

• neologasm (2006): "Playing a toon instead of an avatar implies detachment".
• Diablo 2 (2004): "gotten this toon killed 5 times"
• Anarchy Online forums (2003) : "roll a new toon" - this is a fascinating mixture of words: "Roll" is from pen-and-paper games where dice are rolled to determine stats, while "toon" is opposed to pen-and-paper - nothing is animated there.
• Anarchy Online forums (2002) "I have a few toons"
• The Realm Online (2000) "Hacker + Cheater Toons are buried here."

Clientmod: A clientmod is a simply modification which mostly just affect the look of your game or the gameplay (without any unfair advantages!). So this could be a texturemod or just some different soundfiles or something.

Servermod: A servermod is needed to manipulate the game in a significant way. So there are servers which kick a player who didn't use a specific weapon or where you can't use your own classes your created (ref. CoD). Instead the servermodded lobby offers you some predesigned classes to achieve a specific kind of gameplay on this server. Servermods can also be little modifications like changed soundfiles (UT-Sounds in CS for example). Besides that there are servermods/tools which make it easier to administrate the gameserver, but I won't call this a mod, it's more an admintool.

Keep in mind that:

• some kind of mods are treated as cheating and may cause you to get banned
• some servermods require you to install the same mod on your client (some mods are downloading and installing them itself as you join a modded server)
• some mods may cause problems in different combinations. Read the manual of the mod for mor information
• if a mod needs the servermodification, then you need to play on a server with this mod installed to enjoy this mod