The Origins of “Nerf”

April 23, 2008 · Filed Under Gaming, General, MMOments, Musings

Whenever people at the forums go on a thread-rampage and shout “unfair”, “imba” or “too strong”. The guys at the community department talk to the guys from the tech department. If both don’t come to conclusions, the easiest way to fix the situation is to NERF the damn thing.

But do you know how and when the word “nerf” came to be?

Here’s an interesing story. In the early 70’s, Parker Brothers (yup, makers of Monopoly) produced a polyurethane ball that can be fired from a gun. NERF, some say, stands for “non-expanding recreational foam”. Since then, there have been a number of Nerf Guns on the market similar to the one below

So, basically, “nerfing” means making a powerful gun (or a bazooka) inefficient by making it fire harmless, rubber balls.

The actual gaming definition of NERF is nerf is “a change to a game that downgrades the power, effectiveness or influence of a particular game element in the attempt to achieve balance”

There are several theorems on nerfing.

“Many nerfs are also done out of the sensibility of “change one feature” vs “change all features”. For example, if “X” is determined to be too powerful, the game designer could balance it by either nerfing X or by increasing the power of everything else in the game. Since the net result is the same (the relative power of X has been decreased), it is generally seen as easier to simply nerf X rather than improve the strength of all other elements.” via Wikipedia

That sounded dorky… but made sense.

Next time you say “Nerf”, you can tell your friends a cool story, ayt?

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Comments

10 Responses to “The Origins of “Nerf””

lionel on April 24th, 2008 3:39 am

OK that story was way too geeky for me, hahahaha!
Funny thing is , i understood it!
Paul on April 24th, 2008 4:55 am

Now that’s really cool
Blackwolf on April 24th, 2008 11:21 am

Nerf weapons look really fun. They don’t just fire balls, they also have rods, arrows, crossbow quarrels, missiles, grenades and melee weapons. They were too expensive for us to buy back in the 70s and by the time they came out in the toy market here, we were too old to be interested.
valfogg on April 24th, 2008 7:18 pm

its still fun pelting people with nerf guns.
GM T on April 29th, 2008 1:03 am

@lionel: am glad you did. hehe. Cheers!
Arse on October 17th, 2008 12:07 pm

hahhahah your shit
DeathKnight on October 17th, 2008 12:08 pm

Am I nerfed because im imba or am i imba because im nerfed. ^_^
Cow on October 17th, 2008 12:08 pm

Moo
jj on November 14th, 2008 5:37 am

That story was kinda nerdish and weird,but I understood it.
xeokym on December 2nd, 2008 6:41 pm

yeah, but WTF does IMBA mean??????