Games

Four kinds of string are here, and they got in four different ways.

Words for games, as their applicants define them. Six applicants applied for .gaming, and each of the six defines it as the playing of games. .gamer is defined as a person who plays games, .chess as the board game, .npc as a non playable character, and .jackpot as the top prize in a game, lottery or contest.

Names of games and of a gaming platform. .pubg is described by its applicant as the name of a video game, and .warhammer as a brand of tabletop gaming. The .stake application says its applicant operates the Stake online gaming platform.

Words named only as replacement strings. .craps, .esports and .wager have no application of their own to define them. They are here as plain words: a dice game, competitive video gaming, and a bet.

One string by its everyday sense. .slot is here as in slot machine. That is this tracker’s reading and not the applicants’: all three applications for .slot define it more widely, as an allotted place or position in a schedule and as a narrow opening, and none of them mentions games. One of the three applicants is TLD Empire, which belongs to the studio that publishes this tracker.

Games of skill and games of chance sit in one group here. One of the .gaming applications draws the line itself and says its namespace is for the gaming activity and not for gambling.

Several near neighbours are not members, because their applications define them in wider terms: .fantasy, .hero, .league, .luck and .realm. .mod has two applicants and two meanings.

A string that is a company’s own name is left out of every group on this tracker, so the game companies in ICANN’s list are not here.

The strings in excluded contain a keyword and are not games. .alphabet and .beta contain “bet”, .cosplay, .display, .player and .playlist contain “play”, and .betr, .cygames and .gamecocks are names.